


The Waters and the Wild

by coslyons



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, Faerie AU, Faeries - Freeform, Gen, M/M, TRCBigBang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 01:30:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 33,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8870530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coslyons/pseuds/coslyons
Summary: Blue Sargent has lived in Henrietta her entire life. Most of the time, this isn’t a problem. It only becomes a problem when she has to deal with racist rednecks, small town gossips, and faeries from the nearby forest. She’s faerie-cursed, you see: if she ever kisses her true love, he’ll die. She hasn’t had worry too much about her curse until this year, when she meets Gansey, and his friends Ronan and Adam. Gansey has been on the hunt for a long lost Welsh king for nearly seven years now, and he’s getting closer to finding him. Despite Blue’s best efforts, she’s quickly drawn into their quest. But there’s so much more to the story than any of them ever imagined.
(Basically it's TRC, but with faeries)





	1. Portentous Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> Truly, the most self indulgent thing I've ever written. Please enjoy.
> 
> Special thanks to [Lily](http://microwavehowell.tumblr.com/) for being my beta!
> 
> Comments are greatly appreciated, if you want to leave one. :)

_Come away, O human child!_

_To the waters and the wild_

_With a faery, hand in hand,_

_For the world’s more full of weeping_

_than you can understand._

_—W.B. Yeats, Stolen Child_

* * *

 

The coat Blue is wearing tonight is not quite warm enough for the frigid March air. She had dressed optimistically for the weather she'd hoped for, and had been sorely disappointed. Apparently the official start of spring wasn't required to behave like proper spring.

She breathes on her hands and rubs them together, trying to get some feeling back from the numb coldness of them. The damp stone of the church walls isn't helping her warm up at all, either. This happens every year. She really should know what to expect by now.

Sitting beside her on the crumbling stone wall of the old church is her mother Maura, who had worn an ugly but practical set of gloves and a hat that was one of Blue's first knitting projects, choosing warm over fashionable. The old church didn't really look like much anymore, just the crumbling remains of something that people once thought was important. All that was left these days was the crumbling stone walls, a rusted iron clad door hanging by its one remaining hinge, and the yellow flowers of St. John's Wort growing thick and heavy all over the church yard. It's a place that humanity forgot.

 

But the Folk remember.

 

Every month and a half for as long as Blue Sargent can remember, she's spent the night here in this old church; all the nights in a year that other worlds lay closer to this one, if her family is to be believed. The Folk become more restless and less reserved on nights like tonight, and her mother wants to make sure that Blue manages to avoid any more encounters with faeries for as long as she possibly can.

The problem with faeries is that Blue Sargent has spent her entire life faerie-cursed. Everyone is always super dodgy about the details, hemming and hawing over tarot card spreads and cast runes and scrying bowls instead of giving her any real answers about the hows and whys of her curse.

The only thing anyone ever told her was the what of it: if Blue were to kiss her true love, he'd die.

Which, when you think about it, is something colossally unfair, and so Blue tries not to think about it any more.

Regardless of the poor sap who she's destined to kill with her love, Blue is still stuck in this old church. Outside. At night. In March.

Maura always ends up staring off into space, looking distantly at something Blue will never get a chance to see. Blue is just the telephone, making the message louder without hearing a word. Her mother claims that the nights that Blue has to be locked away from the Folk are also the best nights for looking at the future, especially with Blue there. Which could be true, or it could be a gentle lie to allow Blue's family to keep watch on her all night.

It's very quiet. Her mother is concentrating on psychic endeavors, and it's too cold for anything else interesting to be happening. There's not even any wind, so the trees are quiet too. Her breath is the loudest thing in the church. She tries breathing more shallowly, but only ends up making herself lightheaded.

All of a sudden, the trees explode into rustling motion. There's still no wind, and it seems impossible that the tree are moving themselves. Threading through the rustling is a whispering voice. Blue doesn't understand what it's saying, until she does.

_Gansey_ , the voice whispers _, the newest king. Our Gansey. We have been waiting for him._

And then it's not just one voice, it's hundreds, all folded over each other and twining together. Blue can't tell if she's hearing it in her ears or her head.

"Mom?"

Maura is still caught in her visions, completely unaware there's anything else going on. Her eyes are straining to see whatever she's looking at in the psychic aether.

The rustling is only getting louder, and loose stones are starting to rattle across the floor of the churchyard. Blue shakes her mother's shoulder to try and pull her out of whatever she's looking at, but Maura doesn't respond.

Just as suddenly as the noise began, it stops. Maura blinks stupidly, and looks over at Blue with a pitying look on her face.

"What was that just now?"

Maura picks at a loose thread at the hem of her jacket instead of looking at Blue. "The forest was delivering a message."

"What does that mean? And who is Gansey?"

"When I was looking earlier, I saw something." The pitying look is back in full force, and Blue can almost guess what Maura is about to say. And sure enough: "You'll know Gansey soon enough."

Blue tenses her jaw, and says, "No."

"Yes.” Maura gives her a long look. “He's your true love."

* * *

Across town, in a converted factory called Monmouth Manufacturing, Richard Gansey III wakes from a dead sleep, gasping for air.

Someone called his name. He thinks. He's not sure. He's lost the wisps of his dream to his racing heart.

His alarm clock says 2:13 in glowing red numbers. Gansey stares at it a moment, debating if it's worth trying to go back to sleep. It's a futile debate, since moments later he realizes that he's excruciatingly awake. He's the kind of tired that aches, but Gansey knows he won't be able to sleep any more tonight. It's a miracle he managed to sleep at all.

Gansey sighs, and sits up. Puts his feet on the floor. The old wood floor creaks beneath him as he stands. Monmouth always smells a little musty: an unintentional side effect of being closed up for so long. Usually, Gansey likes it; the musty smell of old wood and paper means the thrill of a new discovery.

Tonight (this morning?), however, the scent feels claustrophobic, like a tomb. Like he's being buried alive in some coffin somewhere. He needs to get out of here.

With shaky hands, Gansey goes to sit on the stairs just outside the door. The night (morning?) is still and quiet. Whispers of cool air brush past his face. The only thing he hears is the buzz of electricity in the streetlight and the sighing of the trees planted along the sides of Main Street. Gansey's chest unknots, and he can breath again.

Time passes without him being fully cognizant of it. He sits there long enough that the sky starts to lighten and cars start driving by. His legs go a little bit numb, but he stays there, wanting to spend as long as he can soaking up the peacefulness.

He sits there long enough that Ronan comes looking for him, clad only in boxer shorts as he sits down next to Gansey on the stairs. The dark circles under Ronan's eyes and his sour expression mean that he didn't sleep either.

"Why are you sitting outside at ass o'clock?"

The way he says it doesn't seem to be looking for an answer, but Gansey responds anyway. "I'm not sure how to explain it, but I think something big is starting."

Ronan's gaze turns inward. "I think you're right."


	2. What is this feeling?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fun game: spot the number of chapters titled with songs in this fic

Nino's is the best and worst of Blue's jobs. It's the best because the hours are regular and the pay is decent. It's the worst because of the raven boys who flock to it at the end of every school day.

Since Nino's is four blocks away from Aglionby, the raven boys have long since absorbed it into their territory. They swarm in wearing their navy sweaters and shiny black shoes, and expect to be treated like royalty. It's disgusting how they treat her like something lesser, like something barely worth notice unless they want to have sex with her. At this point, Blue considers herself immune to any sort of guerilla flirting with all the practice she's had fending off their advances.

The raven boy in front her now is precisely what she hates about Aglionby. As he walks up to the hostess stand, he doesn't even bother speaking to her, instead choosing to continue his conversation into his shiny cellphone while he indicates the party number with one hand. Blue has to school her expression to keep the annoyance off her face.

She leads him and his two friends to a table, lays the menus on the table, and manages to plaster a smile on her face as she walks away. The tallest boy smacks his head on the light hanging over the table, and Blue's smile is less forced but infinitely nastier.

Her shift today is going ridiculously slow. The $8.50 an hour feels more worth it some days than others, and today it just doesn't feel like enough. She's only got about fifteen minutes left on her shift when one of the raven boys from earlier taps her on the shoulder. Blue looks up, up at him. There's probably a foot of difference between the top of his shaved head and the spiky tufts of her hair.

"What?" Blue asks, already done with the conversation before it's even truly started. Since he's already leaving, she doesn't bother with her customer service voice.

"Look, I'm not trying to take up a lot of your time. I just had the feeling that I was supposed to talk to you tonight."

"Yeah, well. I'm not interested."

The tall boy huffs a little sardonic laugh. "Trust me, you're not my type."

Before Blue can manage to splutter out a response, the boy continues. "I think you and I are more alike than you even know." He pauses to look at her name tag. "Blue."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Last night was the equinox." The remark seems out of place, and causes enough confusion to stymy the righteous fury that Blue's been working up. "Now, you don't have to say anything, but I'm guessing you felt something happen. Something big. I can't talk about it now, but if you want to find out what it was, you should give me a call."

Ignoring Blue's surprised expression, the boy snags one of the paper to go menus and the pen laying on the hostess stand. He scrawls a name and a phone number in the least bent corner of it, and leaves it sitting on the ledge of the hostess stand as he walks away to join his friends. As he reaches the door, he turns and gives her a sarcastic salute.

 _Ronan Lynch_ reads the scrawled handwriting. Blue pockets the paper before she has a chance to second guess herself.

* * *

 The brightness of spring holds a crispness to it that brushes softly against Adam's skin like cool water. He can feel the weight of the watery sunshine on his shoulders. The soft Aglionby grass threads between Adam's fingers where he's sitting out on the grass before school. There's still a bit of time before class starts, and he wants to drink in this quiet peacefulness while he can.

Adam doesn't really know how long he's been sitting there with his thoughts drifting when Ronan walks up to Adam and nudges him with the side of his leg. "Earth to Parrish, come in Parrish."

Ronan is nudging him with every word, so Adam swats at Ronan's leg as he stands up. He sways a little as he realizes his error in standing up too quickly. He grabs at Ronan's arm as his vision greys out for a moment.

"Jesus, Parrish, walk much?" Ronan says.

Adam immediately lets go of his arm. "Sorry about that. I stood up too fast."

Ronan shifts his shoulders slightly. "Whatever. I think Gansey's inside."

They walk to the heavy wooden door of Borden Hall. Adam pushes into it with its whole body weight, and it still doesn't want to move. Ronan pushes it with his arms beside Adam's, and the door finally pops open so suddenly, that Adam trips a little bit.

The inside of the building smells like old carpet and mildew like usual. Walking into Latin class every morning was like walking into a horror movie, complete with ominously flickering lights.

Adam's desk creaks as he settles into it and pulls out his notebook.

"So," Gansey says. "Ronan. Are you going to tell us about what you said to the waitress last night?"

Ronan is slouched in a way that looks incredibly uncomfortable in the tiny wooden desks, and can't be good for his back. He briefly raises his head from where it was lolling to give Gansey an unimpressed look before lounging back once more.

Gansey doesn't take the hint, and keeps talking. "No, seriously. This is weird for me. I don't think I've ever seen you actually go talk to a girl like that before."

Ronan sits up very straight in his seat, tension held in the set of his shoulders, and his face is almost too still when he turns to Gansey. "Listen, dick." (It could have been Dick, but Adam didn't really think so.) "Two things. One, that's none of your goddamn business. Two, it's not like that."

Fiddling with the strap of his watch, in what was probably a way to avoid the spikes of Ronan's glare, Gansey says, "Sorry if I'm prying. I just want to make sure I know what’s going on with my friends."

Ronan stares at him a beat longer, then snorts. "You're not sorry, you nosy fucker." His face twists for a moment. "Do you believe in coincidences?"

This is a conversation they've all had before many times on the search for Gansey's king. True to form, Gansey says, "You know I don't."

Ronan nods a little. "Exactly."

It's not an answer, and yet it is. Ronan always likes to say he doesn't lie, but he sure can talk around the truth until Adam wants to scream in frustration. It'll do him no good to worry about it now, so when the teacher walks in, he puts the issue of Ronan and the waitress on a shelf in his mind to consider later.


	3. The feeling was friendship

Blue has been staring at the piece of paper in her hand for a while now. She keeps reaching for the phone, but she can't quite make herself dial the number. It seems like it would go against her principles to willingly speak to a raven boy, but something weird is happening in Henrietta and she wants to know what. That's the rational explanation, at least.

She's made her fiftieth or hundredth false grab for the phone when her cousin Orla peeks her head in the doorway of the phone/cat/sewing room. 

"You might as well do it. Things are going to happen regardless, so just get it over with now."

Blue jumps despite herself. "God, Orla. Mind your own business."

"Yikes, kiddo. Don't bite my head off. Just trying to save you a bit of worrying."

Blue rolls her eyes. "Yeah, whatever."

"You're welcome!" Orla yells as she walks downstairs.

Out of spite, Blue doesn't touch the phone at all. She stands up, and starts to leave the room. Halfway to the door, she pauses. Clenches her teeth. Sighs. "Goddamn it, Orla."

She dials the number. Waits. The phone keeps ringing, ringing, ringing.

Finally, she hears a gruff say, "Hello?"

"Ronan? It's Blue. If you were serious about wanting to talk to me, meet me after my shift at Nino's tonight. I'll be done by 8."

"Okay."

There's an awkward pause that Blue isn't quite sure how to fill, and so she says, "Right then. Bye."

"Bye?"

The boy, Ronan, seems confused by the abruptness, and so Blue says again, "Right", and hangs up.

She rubs her hands aggressively across her face, and says to herself, "Well that was a disaster."

* * *

Ronan is not necessarily the one of them known for his plan making abilities, and so it's a bit surprising when he turns to Gansey before their Latin class starts and says, "We need to go to Nino's at around 7:30 tonight."

It's not like it's an unusual place for them to go for dinner, but Gansey thinks the particular time has to do with a certain waitress. The topic is firmly off limits for now, given that Ronan tried to bite his head off yesterday morning, so Gansey doesn't say anything and just shrugs.

Adam is still blinking owlishly. He doesn't look quite fully awake yet, but Gansey knows he's still listening to the conversation. Gansey takes a breath to say something, and Ronan is suddenly glaring at him again. Gansey quickly veers the conversation into a topic he knows will be safe.

"So yesterday at the library, I found something interesting. I was looking at the historical records of some of the people who've owned parts of the forest."

Adam's voice is sleep rusted when he says, "Only parts?"

Gansey smiles that Adam caught that. "Yes. There are parts of the forest that legally are not owned by anyone." Gansey hesitates for a moment, and says, "And I do mean anyone. It's not federal land either, according to the records. It's like it doesn't even exist."

"We know  _ that's _ bullshit," Ronan drawls.

"It could be that I just missed something, but..." Gansey trails off uncertainly.

"But you probably didn't," Adam says, finishing the rest of the sentence.

"But I probably didn't."

Ronan smirks. "Well. This is where things start to get interesting."

* * *

Ronan is even more restless than usual while they're waiting for the waitress. It's a subtle difference from his usual behavior, but Adam is watching. His eyes keep darting every which way, and his hands are busily fiddling with the pen he'd been using at school. For the sake of everyone's sanity, Ronan had been banned from using click pens several months ago, so all he can do is twirl it around and around his fingers. It's a little hypnotizing, watching the smooth circles of it. Gansey is busy chattering away about his latest research in a soft voice that Adam subconsciously tuned out a while ago.

"And so I looked up the genealogical records at the Henrietta library, the librarian was such a nice lady, she told me—"

Ronan's uncapped the pen and is now taking a few of the napkins they've been given. He's drawing elaborate swirling and spiked designs. They're curiously alive. Adam watches as Ronan draws a little sketch of Gansey gesticulating his story.

Ronan's been doodling on napkins for a couple minutes now when he turns to Adam with a considering look and says, "Give me your hand."

He doesn't quite trust Ronan not to draw a dick on his hand, and Adam knows his eyebrows are showing this skepticism.

Ronan frowns and looks away. "Never mind. Forget it." He almost looks...disappointed.

"Okay." Adam's speaks before he's made the conscious decision to. "Here." He extends his hand palm up to Ronan.

Ronan's hand is warm. He rubs his thumb across Adam's palm, and the skin tingles in its wake. Adam's fingertips feel a little weird.

The ballpoint pen scrapes across the skin on Adam's palm, leaving trailing vines and delicate flowers behind. Ronan turns Adam's hand this way and that, trying to cover it with ink drawings. Ronan is touching his hand the whole time.

The drawing outgrows the confines of his hand and starts snaking up his wrist. When Ronan marks gently on the delicate skin of his inner wrist, Adam shivers.

It's enough to make Ronan stop drawing and let go. They both turn back to Gansey's conversation, but Adam is having a bit of a hard time keeping track of what's going on. Adam tunes back in, but with difficulty.

"...and while I was looking at a pastor's journal, I found mentions of a road that leads to 'the true heart of the forest'. Exact quote there. It might be worth it to go and check it out. Part of the road might still be there if we're lucky." Gansey looks over at Adam now. "How's Saturday?"

_ Are you working _ is the question Gansey's too afraid to ask outright. Adam clears his dry throat and says, "I don't have work until three."

"Perfect!"

A voice says, "Excuse me? Ronan?"

Ronan looks at the waitress, a very pretty girl about their age with short and spiky tufts of hair pinned to her head with brightly colored clips, and his face lights up. Well, as much as Ronan's face did that sort of thing. "Hey Blue."

Gansey has his question face on, and so Adam prepares himself for a wave of secondhand embarrassment. True to form, Gansey asks, "Blue? Is that really your name?"

The waitress—Blue—looks uncannily like Ronan, a muscle in her jaw working as she says spitefully, "Excuse me? Did I miss the memo that all names in the universe have to be personally approved by you?"

Gansey is a bit taken aback, and says, "Certainly not. You do have to admit that it's a bit of an unusual name though."

"Your name is Gansey, Dick,"(or dick, as it were) Ronan says. "You have no leg to stand on here."

Blue goes pale and quiet, and tension coats the air. The back of Adam's neck prickles, biology’s way of warning for danger. In an attempt to break the tense stillness, Adam collects his bag and stands, trying to subtly usher everyone outside, "So Blue, what do you know about the forest?"

Ronan gives Adam a startled look like he's just slapped him. Gansey is quietly relieved. 

Blue considers it for a moment, before she purses her lips and says, "Less than I probably should, but more than some people."

They've made it outside to where Ronan's BMW and the Pig are parked. When Adam saw the BMW this morning, he'd thought it was a bit excessive of Ronan to drive when Gansey was already driving, but it made sense now. Ronan and the waitress would go and chat, and Gansey would drive Adam to his apartment.

"Want to know more about it? We're going exploring Saturday morning, if you'd like to join us." Adam ignores Ronan's glare and Gansey's betrayed look.

She gives him a hard look. Truthfully, it's nearly as powerful as one of Ronan's glares and Adam wants to look away. He meets her gaze steadily anyway.

Finally, she huffs and rolls her eyes, "Fine. Sure. Let's do this. What could  _ possibly  _ go wrong?"


	4. Butterflies and Big Ass Trees

Gansey has them all pile into his obnoxiously orange car bright and early on Saturday morning, since Adam had work later that afternoon. Apparently Gansey had found an old road that looked promising, and that's where they are going exploring today.

Ronan aggressively plants himself in the front seat before anyone else can get in the car, so Adam and Blue shuffle in through Gansey's door. Ronan eyes her in the rear view mirror as she slides over to sit behind him. Since he's being such an asshole, Blue glares back at him. Adam breaks the standoff by tugging at Ronan's ear. Ronan swats at his hand, and the tension in the car is gone.

When Gansey tries to start the car, it gives a few half-hearted coughs before roaring to life. They start down the empty country roads with the engine rattling the body of the car, and Ronan's terrible electronica blaring through the speakers. The A/C is broken, so they've rolled all the windows down. It smells like the beginning of summer, like freedom and sunscreen. (The sunscreen is Gansey, though, his nose painted white like one of those stereotypical Hollywood dads.)

There's a buzz in Blue's chest that feels like the electric beginning of something.

The street goes from two lanes, to one, to a gravel road. And then they're bumping over ruts in a dirt road, surrounded by thick trees on both sides. Finally, it narrows enough ahead of them that they can't drive any further. Gansey parks the car, and everyone shuffles out.

Blue tries not to feel like the trees are looming, but they kind of are. The branches curve over the cut out line of the road, making a tunnel out of their branches. It's a little claustrophobic. Adam nudges her with his elbow; Gansey and Ronan have started walking ahead.

She's glad she'd decided to wear boots. The underbrush is full of prickly bits that snag at her bootlaces and her socks.

The trees around them are getting bigger and older the further they press on into the forest. Trees always seemed so wise to Blue, and these trees felt like they knew more than most. The gaps between the trees get larger and larger as the width of the trunks increase. It really feels like they're walking into the heart of the forest.

Ahead, the underbrush clears. She might have called it a clearing if not for the massive tree growing right in the center of it. The tree is taller than all the other trees around them, its boughs spanning the entire width of the clearing and then some. Its trunk is gnarled and twisted, and wide enough around that it would have taken all four of them to circle it with their arms. Something about the tree seems more present than a tree should, and Blue couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.

Gansey cranes his head back to try and see the top of the tree, and nearly falls over. With wonder in his voice, he asks, “What in the world is that?”

“It’s a hawthorn tree,” Ronan mutters. He’s glancing around the clearing shiftily, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes.

“I know what kind of tree it is, Ronan. The problem is that they aren’t native to Virginia.” Gansey is aghast. “It doesn’t belong here.”

Adam looks at the tree with a new look of consideration on his face, but doesn’t say anything.

Ronan scowls at the ground. “Right then. You can be the one to tell it that. I’m sure it’d love to hear from you.”

The four of them walk around the tree in a little group; no one wanted to get too far away in this strange place. Wandering didn’t seem like a safe thing to do. A mild apprehension keeps them all quiet too. They listen to the sound of the leaves brushing against one another. To the sound of their shoes in the grass.

Blue looks up into the branches. Sunlight shines down between the branches, only little spots of it making it down to the forest floor. To her right, Adam keeps looking all around him, turning to look at the smaller trees at the edges of the clearing and then looking back at the large tree in front of him. Concern pinches between his eyebrows as he rubs the back of his neck. “Do y’all feel that?”

Gansey turns to him immediately. “Feel what?”

“I don’t know.” Adam keeps looking around them suspiciously. “It feels like we’re being watched.”

“We are,” says Ronan, voice strained.

He’s squatting next to something embedded into the base of the tree. Blue can’t see what he’d found, but the certainty with which he’d responded led her to believe that it was not something good. The tightness around his eyes wasn’t a good sign either. She walks over to him, and sees him looking at a large rock with something written on it in something dark red. Blue just hopes it’s not blood.

The longer Blue looks at the strange symbols spiraling to the center of the rock, the more confused she gets. She knows it’s a language, but she can’t tell how or why she knows that. Blue still has no idea what it says, but Ronan obviously does. His face has gone even more tight and pale.

She asks, “What does it say?”

Adam walks over now to stand at the other side of Ronan, and looks down in puzzlement. “Are those even words?”

“Yes,” Ronan says. There’s a pale line around the edges of his lips where he’s pressing them together. He points to the edge of the spiral, finger trailing loosely along the surface of the stone as he reads. “Call the forest by name. Cabeswater.”

Adam frowns in confusion. “How do you know what that says?”

Completely ignoring the question, Ronan stands. Adam looks briefly very annoyed with him, but Gansey interrupts by asking, “Why would the forest give us its name?”

Ronan shrugs expansively, and says, “Because it wants us to call it by name, apparently.”

"Hm." Gansey looks up at the leaves above him, chin tilted up and a wondrous expression on his face. “ _ Cabeswater _ .”

Gansey’s voice rings out louder than it should have, turns the name into an evocation that reverberates.

The leaves on all the trees start to tremble, despite the fact that there is no wind. The air hums, and butterflies appear from nowhere and whirl around them in a tornado of orange and black wings. Gansey holds out his arms, and laughs as butterflies settle along them. More butterflies land on his head. Their orange wings look more golden, nestled in his dark brown hair. They crown him, shaping him into something brighter, something more. Something  _ kingly _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may spot a Kings reference, and you would be correct in assuming that I intended that.


	5. F is for Friends (and also for other words)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's a little bit of lowkey suicidal ideation here. I say lowkey because he doesn't really do anything or strongly think it, but it's definitely there and very obvious.

Ronan only wants to die when he's sitting still and quiet, these days. The worst part about it all is that he knows that he is only keeping himself going for Gansey’s sake; the guilt would crush Gansey irreparably, and Ronan was not crazy or desperate enough to do that yet. He holds the thought of it in the back of his mind to warm his fingers on when the nights are especially dark: a grim afterthought that sticks around like cigarette smoke on your clothes even after you've washed them.

Tonight is one of the better nights. The moon is bright and full overhead, and Ronan can feel an itch beneath his skin that reminds him that his heart is still beating. He's burning with a restless energy. It's nights like this where he's afraid to be around anyone but Kavinsky, unsure of everything except the ground under his feet and the bottle in his hand. The elderberry wine they're drinking stains their lips dark red, like they've just taken a bite out of someone's heart.

It's history reborn: young gods in the forest, beautiful and wine soaked. Theirs is a meaty and blood-soaked religion where everyone's an outcast, a collection of all things wild, chaotic, and dangerous. The music thrums in the night, a dark and simmering song that presses fingertips into his skin. The pressure of it pulls him out of his head.

Ronan and Kavinsky have been passing the wine bottle back and forth long enough for everything to feel distant and loose, and Ronan can finally breathe. The night still digs under his skin, but he's more numb to it now.

The party—the  _ revel _ —is slowly but surely moving away from where they're draped on the hood of Kavinsky's car. He and Kavinsky are left alone on the edge of the forest, drunk and staring at the sky.

It's a night for the faeries, Ronan thinks, or says aloud. It doesn't honestly matter all that much. Except when Kavinsky responds, and Ronan has to drag his sluggish brain back to that train of thought.

“Man, I love faeries. Making deals with faeries is the ultimate rush.” Kavinsky reclines against the windshield with a rapturous expression on his face. Whatever was in his little flask seems to be doing a number on him. “Nothing's forbidden as long as you're brave enough to take it.”

Ronan has to laugh at that. “Yeah, or crazy enough. If you mess up, the Folk will fuck you up before you can blink.”

Kavinsky waggles his eyebrows at Ronan, and his lips twist into a smarmy grin. “Are you going to fuck me up? I like a man with a wild side.”

Fucking Kavinsky. Ronan rolls his eyes, and shoves at Kavinsky's shoulder. “You're so full of shit.”

"Yeah. Sure." Kavinsky rolls a joint, and holds it out to Ronan. "Want some?"

Ronan prefers his habits with hangovers. "No."

"More for me then." White smoke streams from between Kavinsky's lips. The earthy smell of it hangs in the air between them. Kavinsky watches him with dark eyes.

It's suddenly a lot quieter, like someone has muted the world around them. Ronan takes another swig of the elderberry wine to help him swallow the sudden dryness in his throat.

Kavinsky is leaning towards Ronan when his phone buzzes loudly against the hood of the car from its place in his back pocket. Startled, Ronan jumps from the car, and loses his balance a little as he lands funny on the uneven ground. Everything is really loud again. He fishes the phone out of his pocket, and answers the call.

"Hey Gansey." He has to shout a little to be heard.

"Ronan. Where are you?"

Ronan presses the phone closer to his ear, as though that's going to help. He plugs up his other ear and shout-says, "Out."

"Can you come back?"

Something is a little strange about Gansey's tone, so Ronan walks a little bit away from the music and says, "Why?"

Gansey sighs into the phone. Ronan was right; his breath is shaky. "Please, Ronan."

"Fine, I'll be there in twenty."

Ronan goes back to Kavinsky's car long enough to pick up his jacket and the rest of the elderberry wine, before making his way over to the BMW.

"Where are you going?"

Kavinsky follows him over to his car. Ronan unlocks it and falls gracelessly into the driver's seat.

He bares his teeth in a way he knows is not in the slightest bit friendly. "Home. I've been summoned."

"And here I thought the only thing that could summon you was a pentacle and some Latin chanting." Kavinsky is all smiles until Ronan shrugs, and then suddenly all the jokes are replaced by something that looks like anger.

"Are you seriously going to let Dick Gansey order you around like that?"

"Yep." Ronan let the 'p' pop obnoxiously, refusing to let the opportunity to poke buttons go to waste.

"Whatever man. Go back to your master." Kavinsky takes a few loping steps backward. "But if you decide to slip your leash and go wild, you know where to find me."

Ronan slams his door and rolls down the window just to flip Kavinsky off as he drives away.


	6. Forests have secrets

It's a hazy morning. This isn’t necessarily because of the weather (even though it  _ is _ a little bit drizzly), but because Gansey hadn't really slept properly for several days now. He's too tired to notice the individual leaves on the trees, and everything around him blurs together into a single meld of rich green. The cool mist that still lingers beneath the canopy of the forest brushes against his skin, and it seems like he can sense every miniscule droplet. It's still mid morning, but it seems like twilight here beneath the leaves.

Cabeswater is still and quiet around them. Maybe it's sensed Gansey's mood and is unwilling to conjure wonders for such an unappreciative audience. Maybe Cabeswater is tired today too.

Either way, the only sound as they're walking through trees is the sound of their own feet snapping fallen branches and brushing against the summer grasses. Blue, Ronan, and Adam are walking behind him. Gansey doesn't even have to look at Ronan to know that he's making a sour expression at being forced to walk in the rain. The trees block most of the rain, but sometimes a giant drop of water will fall right onto Gansey’s scalp and make him shudder. 

The air is sticky on Gansey's skin. It smells like rich dirt and greenery.

When the ground disappears beneath his feet, Gansey's heart leaps in his chest as he falls forward. He hits the ground only moments later. The place where the ground dropped out is a shallow set of stone stairs.

Adam comes over to help Gansey up. He's looking around them, but his eyes snag on something over Gansey's shoulder.

"Oh," Adam says, eyes wide. Blue and Ronan have similar expressions behind him.

Confused, Gansey turns around.

He understands the sentiment now.

Weathered stone arches mark the edges of what was once a huge stone structure. Grass pokes up through the paving stones, and piles of rubble are all that remain from the buildings. There are trees curving in misshapen spirals, their branches holding only remnants of the steps they used to have.

From what Gansey can tell, the structure is more or less circular. The four of them are all lurking at one side of it, in a sort of mutual agreement to stay close. In the center of the circle, there seems to be a hole. Gansey catches Adam's eye, and gestures towards it vaguely. Adam shrugs, and starts to walk towards the center.

The hole in the ground turns out to be a staircase spiraling down and down and down. Gansey feels like he can see the bottom, but the stairs are so dark that he can't tell for certain. The opening of the stairs is just off to their left. It would be dangerous to go down the stairs without a light, and Gansey didn't bring one.

"Does anyone by chance have a flashlight?"

To Gansey's complete surprise, Blue reaches into the fuzzy green bag she's carrying, and pulls out a flashlight covered in pink Lisa Frank stickers.

At everyone's shocked expressions, Blue wrinkles her nose and says, "I literally live with psychics. Why are you surprised?"

To move on from the topic, Gansey quickly says, "Excellent! Lead the way, Jane."

They start down the stairs, one after the other: Blue then Gansey then Adam then Ronan. The stairs are low enough that Ronan needs to duck his head walking down them. The stones are damp from the morning mist, and it feels a bit like being swallowed by some sort of mythical beast.

Further and further down they go until they reached the ground.

The chamber at the bottom of the stairs has only one other tunnel leading off it, and so they all walk in that direction, staying close to the only light. At the end of the tunnel is a tomb door. The air seems like it's humming, and Gansey's skin feels weird and tingly.

The feeling only gets more intense as they approach the door. The stone of the door is elaborately carved with ravens and swords and vines all twisting and twining together on its surface. It was a burial place fit for a king.

Gansey has to take a moment to catch his breath.

The four of them stand in a hushed silence. Adam, Ronan, and Blue are looking at him for how to proceed. He's paralyzed though. Apparently getting everything you've been looking for is a massive shock to the system.

Ronan is the first to move. "Fuck this," he says. He walks over to the edge of the door, and starts trying to push it to the side. Ronan straining at the door is enough for the rest of them to get a hand on it and push with him. With a grinding sound that makes Gansey wince and grit his teeth, the door slowly moves.

When there's enough of an opening for them to get through, they slip into the next chamber. Gansey's heart immediately sinks at the sight of the body lying on the burial slab.

 

It's not a king.

 

It's not a man at all.

 

Lying on the slab with her hands crossed over her chest, is a woman. She's wearing a dress that still retains it's original rich blue color. Her masses of long, black hair are knotted together in intricate braids. Everything shows the signs of the years underground.

Gansey takes a step forward, trying to get a better look at the body.

As he gets closer, he notices that the woman's ears curve to gentle points: a faerie. He reaches out to touch the points.

The faerie woman sits bolt upright, and Gansey jolts backwards.

All he can do is look at her. All she does is look back.

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, she says, "Well this ought to be fun," and starts screaming.


	7. Faeries are incredibly Not Helpful

The faerie woman started screaming as soon as they pulled her from the tomb they found her in, and she still hasn't stopped. Blue considers herself good at handling a lot of continuous noise, due mostly to the large number of people living in her house, but this was getting ridiculous.

She could see it was grating on everyone. Even Gansey wasn't doing quite so good a job hiding his cringes every time the faerie woman would take a breath to continue screaming anew. Adam has already given up on trying to outlast her, and plugged a finger into his ear.

By the time they reach 300 Fox Way, the screaming has gone on long enough that Blue feels like she's starting to tune it out. It's reached the point where the sound has stopped making sense on its own.

They haul her out with only minor difficulty; her main resistance at this point is the amount of noise she's making. Blue can see a few curious neighbors peeking at them from behind their curtains. They manage to get her through the door, but woman doesn't stop screaming even when they bring her into the kitchen.

Calla appears at the door and bellows, "WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?"

Blue yells back, "We found a faerie woman in a tomb."

Calla looks past Blue to Gansey. Her face is thunderous. “Why did you bring her here?”

“We didn't know what else to do with her,” Gansey says, talking loudly to be heard over the woman. “We thought she'd fit in here.”

Calla's expression shifts from thunderous to outright murderous. Blue has to resist the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. Gansey puts his foot in his mouth so often, she's surprised there's not a permanent shoe print on his tongue. Before Blue has to restrain Calla from killing her friend, she hears Persephone's soft voice from the hall.

“It's okay. I've been expecting her.” Persephone peeks around the door frame, arms full of a pile of knitted...something. The woman immediately stops screaming to listen to her, and the sudden silence has the room ringing. 

“Well. Maybe. We'll have to see if this fits before we can know for sure. Either way, you can definitely untie her.”

As Ronan comes forward to cut her restraints, the woman grins widely at Persephone, showing way too many teeth for the smile to seem anything but menacing. "Oh, I like her."

Persephone smiles serenely back at her, and hands over the knitted thing, which is, Blue discovers as the faerie woman shakes it out to put it on, a type of sweater/tunic combination in a vast array of colors. The sleeves are different lengths, one covering her entire left hand and the other barely reaching the woman's slender wrist. It's really an ugly sort of garment, but if it got the woman to shut up, Blue is more than happy with it.

The woman is now rubbing her hands all over the knitted garment, rolling the weave between her fingers over and over again. She was too quiet now, looking at all of them smugly.

Since she had the least tolerance for generalized bullshit, Calla is the one who snaps at the faerie woman, “Who are you?”

The woman tilts her head back and cackles, a sound that reminded Blue of a raptor. “My name is that of all women: Sorrow.”

Blue clenches her teeth to help her resist the urge to scream, or else to punch the faerie in the face. Neither probably wouldn't have helped much, but it would have been extremely satisfying for Blue. Persephone gives Blue a warning look like she could read her mind. Knowing Persephone, that was entirely possible.

Calla crosses her arms and huffs. "I won't have an unNamed faerie in my house, regardless of whether you were expecting her or not."

"Hospitality is never amiss," Persephone says, "especially with the Folk."

The argument continues, and Blue loses track of it. Maura shows up at some point, adding her earthy voice to the mix. Gansey is staring contemplatively at the woman, and the woman is staring disdainfully back at him.

Gansey cautiously approaches her. "Would you tell us your name?"

"No." The woman looks away from him contemptuously.

“How about a name for a name, then?”

The woman tries to look uninterested by staring out the window, but her eyes keep darting to Gansey every few seconds. The rest of the squabbling in the room fades more and more the longer Gansey stands next to the faerie woman. Calla is still protesting the woman's presence, but it's a halfhearted protest at best: even she is listening to see what Gansey is going to do.

The woman bares her teeth in a grimace and looks at the table, before turning to look Gansey dead in the eye. “Very well, little king. I will trade your name for mine.”

Gansey looks briefly stunned, eyes going a bit wide around the edges, before he says to her, “Gansey.”

“Gansey?” The question in her voice makes it sound like she doesn't quite believe he's telling the whole truth.

“That's all there is.”

“I suppose that will have to do, little king. Little Gansey.” The woman looks back at the table. “My name is Gwenllian.”

"Oh," says Gansey. Even Calla raises one sharp eyebrow.

"I take it you know who I am, little Gansey."

"Yes." He breathes out softly. "You're Glendower's daughter. You're the Raven King's daughter."

Ronan and Adam had been talking quietly in the corner, but Ronan's head whips up to look at Gwenllian sharply. Everyone is suddenly a lot more interested.

Before anyone can say something, Maura clears her throat. "Well. It looks like she's staying, then."


	8. Sacrifices

That afternoon, when they go to Cabeswater, the light is different. Usually, Cabeswater feels like that first perfect breath after leaving school, tinged with sunlight and freedom. Today, though, it just feels like a forest. Ronan can't explain why the subtle difference bothers him so much, but it does.

Something about the air smells wrong and dangerous, like the smell of gunmetal or ozone before a lightning strike. It's the feeling of that moment of waiting at the top of a roller coaster, or missing the bottom step.

His jaw hurts. He's clenching his teeth too hard.

Ronan makes a conscious effort to relax his jaw, but he doesn't lower his guard at all. The others are chatting idly, kneeling down to examine the delicate blossoms of a flowering vine curling around a tree. He tries to tune them out and focus on the sounds around him.

They're still kneeling at the base of the tree when Ronan hears it: the chattering of beaks, the scrape of claws along the tree trunks, the swish of feathers rustling. He immediately looks to the tree tops. He can't see them yet, but that doesn't mean they're not there.

"We need to leave. Now."

Gansey looks like he's about to protest, but Ronan yanks him up by the arm and pushes him back towards the Pig. Adam takes one look at Ronan's face, and taps Blue on the arm. Ronan doesn't wait for them to ask any questions, and just starts walking back to the car. He's going too fast for it to seem casual. When you're dealing with this kind of monster, it's better to seem like you're unaware of their presence, but Ronan really doesn't want to let them get too close.

Adam and Blue catch up to where he's still dragging Gansey by. Off behind him, he can hear the sound of their chattering beaks getting closer. It's so hard not to look behind him. He walks faster.

"Ronan, what's going on?" Blue sounds freaked out, and Ronan can't blame her.

He's about to tell her, when Adam says lowly, "We're being followed." He looks at Ronan with keen eyes. "Aren't we?"

The chattering beaks have stopped, and that, if anything, is worse. Ronan's throat suddenly goes too dry for him to speak, so he just nods.

Blue makes a slightly strangled sound, but Ronan doesn't turn to look at her. He focuses on walking quickly and purposefully. The forest around them is menacingly silent. Ronan is overly aware of the pumping his heart, the sound of his rushing blood. He's panicking, but there's no time for it.

A branch snaps behind them, and Ronan whirls around. Lurking just at the edge of the darkness, Ronan sees the wicked curve of a sharp beak, it’s dark and oily feathers clumped together, its razor talons cutting into the dirt.

"Fuck."

Blue turns around. "Shit. What do we do?"

Ronan tries to quell the rising panic. "Run."

* * *

They were never going to outrun the beasts. It was too dark and they were not fast enough to escape. Someone had to slow the monsters down.

Adam Parrish has never been afraid to make the difficult decision.

"Go on ahead. I can handle this," he hears himself say. He turns, facing back in the direction they'd come from.

The others are afraid, but he can do this. Adam knows about sacrifice better than anyone. He kneels and buries his hands in the dirt.

"Cabeswater. I want to make a deal." He closes his eyes. Time slows down around him. The sound of his friends' footsteps and the chattering of beaks fades slowly away, like he's just ducked his head underwater and is now swimming deeper and deeper. It's just him and the forest now.

The trees sigh in his mind, voices folding over each other and weaving together like the tendrils of a vine. _What do you want, human? What do you want, Adam?_

I want to save my friends.

The trees murmur at each other in a language Adam cannot understand. _We cannot give you something for nothing. We need you to help us in return._ They brush their leaves against his face.

What do you need from me?

_We need your strong hands. We need your willing eyes._

I will be your hands. I will be your eyes.

_Our bargain is made._

And then the ground dropped out from under him.

He was falling and falling and falling, wind sliding through his spread fingers as he tumbled downwards, downwards. Down the rabbit hole, indeed.

Around him, he sees blurred faces, and flashes of movement. It's like a poorly made stop motion movie: everything choppy and disjointed from one moment to the next. Nothing seems to fit in with the stuff around it.

The only constant is the gentle sound of tree leaves rustling. His fall slows as he concentrates on the trees. It feels like they're holding him, like a mother with an infant. He is held to a chest and he can feel the insistent pulse of something like an ancient heart.

A dark spire rises in the distance, and Adam feels an inexorable pulls towards it. It's apparent that even if he doesn't know what it means yet, he will soon. The future is a silvery line stretched out in front of him, and Adam knows he could find it by following the thread.

The feeling fades, and Adam is brought back to the clearing.

Time is stuck there. Adam sees the bird creatures reaching out towards him with razor talons, red eyes angry and fierce. They smell like decay, and the forest shivers in disgust. They are a perversion of magic, born of hatred and greed. The creatures do not belong here, their existence a violation of the laws that bind all Folk.

Adam reaches out, feeling a guiding push on his arm. His fingers snag the loose threads of the magic that formed the bird creatures. As he pulls, the creatures unravel from the inside. He pulls until the thread is wound around his hands, coiled like a rope. The forest takes the coil from him.

Nothing ever really dies in a forest. It's only ever repurposed into something else. Magic will never go to waste here, not when there's so much to be done.

The forest hold on to Adam, and bids him to watch the winds. The winds are changing.

* * *

Adam is standing oddly erect in the clearing. His eyes are vague and distant as he looks at the battered corpses of the bird men at his feet. He is strange and wild in a way that scares Gansey a little. Gansey wants to say something, but all his words are trapped in his suddenly dry throat.

Ronan is the first to step forward. "Adam."

Adam turns to him in a way that doesn't quiet seem fully human, and Gansey has to stop his instinct to recoil. No one breathes. Adam blinks a few times, and settles back into himself, a boy once more. He sways on his feet, and Ronan rushes forward to catch him before he hits the ground.

"Let's get out of here before something else decides to happen," says Blue, and Gansey heartily agrees.

Adam is still pretty out of it, so Ronan gives him a piggyback ride, mostly due to the fact that Ronan is the only person in the group tall enough to carry Adam's gangly limbs without them dragging on the ground.

It feels like they're refugees of a war or something,  slowly but surely making their way out of the forest.

By the time they stumble out of the forest together, it's approaching dusk. Time must have bent strangely around them in the forest, causing them to lose hours. Adam is draped over Ronan's back and Blue and Gansey are leaning heavily against each other, but they all make it. Gansey wants to sigh in relief, but he holds himself together at the sight of a gleaming car parked on the side of the road, just ahead of them.

Henry Cheng is leaning against his shiny silver car, talking on the phone. As he sees them walking up, he says into his phone, "I will have to call you back."

He doesn't say anything to them until they're right in front of him. "Would I be correct in assuming you've had kind of a rough day?" Henry's eyes are keen as he looks them all over.

They're all too haggard to justify the question with a response. Ronan just looks stonily at Henry.

And then Gansey remembers himself. He really wants nothing more than to be able to wear his exhaustion, but he can't let himself do that right now. He pulls out a smile (definitely less perfect than it should have been, but a smile nonetheless) from some hidden place, and gives it to Henry. "Hello, Henry. Can you give us a ride? We seem to have misplaced our car."

"That I can do, Ganseyman."


	9. INTERLUDE: Niall Lynch

Are you going to be quiet?

Listen.

It all happened long ago, and believe it or not, it’s absolutely true.

Back when the world was still full of wonders, a clever craftsman named Niall lived in a wild plot of land near the Blue Ridge Mountains.

This craftsman was known far and wide for his incredible skill in the things he created. He made lovely dolls that looked as though they were one breath from coming to life. He made machines that seemed to run on their own power. He made lace out of metal, and cloth out of wood. Anything that could be made by human hands, as he would tell the people who visited his shop, he could make. He was very clever, and so this might have even been true.

The clever craftsman lived right at the edge of a faerie forest.

One day, the craftsman lost track of time as he was hiking through this forest. It was not safe for a human to walk through the forest at night, especially alone, and especially not when the moon was full.

And so, when the craftsman heard the tinkling laughter of faeries just around the bend of the path, he laid down beneath some bushes to try and escape their notice. As the faerie troop walked by, the craftsman pretended to be asleep. He kept his breathing shallow and his body still.

However, the craftsman couldn't resist the urge to look at the mysterious Fair Folk. He peeked out from one cracked eyelid, and saw the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. She was radiant. Her hair flowed to her waist in a silky tumble of golden curls, and her skin glowed as pale and lovely as the moonlight. The clever craftsman knew then that he would make this faerie woman as his wife, no matter what it took, so overcome was he by her beauty.

He worked tirelessly day and night until he finally figured out what to do.

Niall laid a trap for his faerie woman. He filled it with the most beautiful and clever things he'd ever made. But by far, his most beautiful and clever creation was an unsolvable puzzle box made so handsomely that one couldn't help but to try to open it. He knew that this would ensnare even the cleverest of the Fair Folk, since they can't stand to have beautiful things wasted.

And so, on the night of the full moon, he ventured out into the forest to put his clever plan into action. Laying his creations across the path, he settled down to wait for the lovely faerie woman to pass.

Just as he thought, her attention was snared by the beautiful and clever crafts as she walked past. She held the puzzle box in her pale and delicate hands, turning it this way and that to find its solution. He watched her get more and more frustrated with the box over the course of many hours.

When dawn was just around the corner, he emerged from the bushes where he'd been waiting, and said to the faerie woman, “Pardon me, lady. Do you need assistance with that?”

The woman, startled by the craftsman, said, "But how can you solve it if I cannot? You are only a human."

"I am the maker of the box, and if you will give me your true name, I will tell you all its secrets."

Now, the faerie woman, called Camhaoir by her people, was no fool. She knew that to give a mortal your true name is to give them power over you. She also knew that the craftsman was very clever indeed, and she was intrigued by him. Camhaoir may have even loved him a little in that moment, for the clever craftsman had a wicked gleam in his eye that matched the wicked gleam in hers.

"Or," she said to him, "I will be your wife if you tell me its secrets."

Niall knew something about faeries himself, and so was wary. "Do you promise that you will be my wife for the rest of my days, provided I tell you about the puzzle?"

"Yes."

And so, they were married. Niall took the faerie woman (who had decided to call herself Aurora in honor of the name her people had called her) to church, and they became man and wife.

When the time came for Niall to fulfill his end of the bargain, he was afraid that Aurora would be angry at him for the trick he'd pulled on her to get her to marry him. But Aurora had already known the kind of man he was, and so was unsurprised that the puzzle box was unsolvable.

Still, he felt bad, because he was a decent enough sort and he actually loved her as a person by this point. So Niall made wonder after wonder for his new wife, and she realized that she loved him back.

Two years later, and they had their first son. He would grow up to be a liar or a storyteller, depending on who you asked. He would be loved and he would be hated and he would be both at the same time. He would be the worst of his father and the worst of his mother all put together into something achingly human. But that's getting ahead of the story. For now, he was a fat and happy infant that his mother and father cooed over.

A year after their first son came their second son. He would grow up to be a hellion and a troublemaker with a penchant for telling the truth. He was the best and worst of both his parents all tied into something extraordinary. But that's a story for later. For now, he adored his older brother and his parents, and grew into a smiling child with a head full of dark curls.

Because this is a faerie tale, and there's always three, Niall and Aurora had a third son. He would grow into a smiling bear of a person, all golden curls and happiness. He was the best of both his parents, with none of the worst. But that's not yet. For now, he basked in the adoration bestowed on him by his family (but especially his mother, since he was her favorite).

And so, Niall had his three sons, all of whom he loved fiercely. He loved his middle son best of all, though, since Ronan was a dreamer and maker just like his father, and everyone loves a story about themselves.

Ronan is half-faerie, half-maker, fully an impossibility. The magic in the forest is his birthright.

He can choose who to be.


	10. The epitome of "yikes"

_Chorus: I am but a vision,_

_a night-born fancy of dreams_

_—Euripides, Heracles l.112-113_

In the sweltering heat of his apartment, Adam Parrish feels like he's roasting alive. It's a peculiarly dripping sort of heat that only happens in June, the air so thick and muggy that you can feel the humidity pressing against the inside of your chest. It's like drowning without the rush of the water around you.

He's laying on top of his bedsheets in his underwear, the most unclothed he could possibly be while allowing for the possibility of late night visitors. Ronan isn't a frightening person, but waking up naked from a dead sleep to his presence is not how Adam wants to spent the night.

That is, if he could ever actually sleep.

His body is too restless to let him slow down enough to sleep. He presses his forearm across his face, and tries to see if that makes any difference. It's quiet except for the sound of Adam's breathing, when suddenly, a song twines through the apartment.

For a moment Adam doesn't think anything's wrong. Churches have music. He's living above the church offices. Nothing to be worried about.

But then he actually listens to it. It's a ghostly and haunting tune that somehow sounds like dripping rainwater, or the flash of sunlight through the leaves, or the rush of blood through a beating heart.

He sits up uncertainly, trying to hear the song better. It whispers distantly at him. He turns his head from side to side, trying to get a better idea of where it's coming from.

The sound doesn't change. It might be coming from his head.

Adam blinks, he's standing outside the door of his apartment. The music is louder now, curling around his head like a snake. The whispers have grown louder too, filling up all the empty spaces the music left behind. He shuffles to the edge of the stairwell, the old wood of the floor rough against his bare feet. It's then he realizes that he's basically walked out of his apartment naked.

He's not sure if it's worse that he did it, or that he can't remember doing it.

Either way, he goes back inside to put on some clothes, because it feels weird to walk into any church, even just the church offices, in just your underwear. Once he has a shirt and a pair of shorts on, he sneaks down to the offices and calls Gansey from the office phone.

* * *

Gansey wasn't sleeping when Adam called him. He was just sitting in the vague and cloudy exhaustion caused by his insomnia. It's been worse than usual for the past couple of weeks. Gansey just can't seem to get his brain to stop juggling thoughts and ideas long enough to sleep. His head feels like an overstuffed pillow, bursting at the seams with everything that's inside it.

Mindless activities with his hands help him lose a couple of his thoughts, so he's been working more and more on his cardboard model of the town. He's got a lot of downtown Henrietta completed, and he's working his way out from there.

He'd been sitting in underwear, gluing the sides of the bank together when Adam called him.

The buzz of his phone startles him so much that he jumps before collecting himself enough to answer it.

"Hello?"

"Gansey." There's a long pause. "Can you come get me? There's something—I need to talk to you about something."

He sounds weirdly strained over the phone, and Gansey can't be sure if that's the phone's fault or if something is wrong with Adam.

"Yes, of course. I'll be there shortly."

Gansey snags a pair of basketball shorts and a questionably clean crew shirt off the floor. It's hard to tell whose clothes are whose these days, since both he and Ronan have ended up with clothes strewn everywhere. The shorts are extraordinarily long, and therefore probably originally belonged to Ronan. No matter. He shoves his feet into his boat shoes, foregoing socks entirely.

His keys are a nice weight in his hand as he walks to his car. It’s orange paint is practically glowing in the moonlight, and Gansey loves the sight of it. Gansey slides into the car, the cracked leather of the seat biting into the backs of his thighs. The engine rumbles, rattling the frame of the car.

The snarling of the engine is too loud for this time of night, especially as Gansey drives through the silence of Henrietta's downtown.

In no time at all, he's parked in front of the church offices of St. Agnes. The church is dark, nothing but wavering shadows and a flickering corner light. From the shaded doorway, a single shadow peels off from the rest and starts to walk towards the car. As the shadow walks into the headlights, it resolves itself into Adam.

The car door creaks as Adam opens it, and gingerly sits down on the front seat of the car. His whole body is tense and wary, looking like he's about to bolt at the next sudden sound like a deer. Gansey hasn't seen Adam this panicked in months, not since he'd moved into St. Agnes over Christmas.

Gansey tries to keep his voice calm and steady. "What's up, Adam?"

Adam closes his eyes and twists his fingers together anxiously. "Just drive for a bit."

It was a questionable effort at best to try and pull information out of Adam that he wasn't ready to give yet, Gansey knows from experience. So, Gansey puts the car in reverse, and pulls out of the parking lot.

The back roads leading out of Henrietta are completely deserted, nothing around except them and the trees. They've been driving for about fifteen minutes when Adam makes a strangled choking sound and says, "Pull over."

Gansey jerks the steering wheel immediately, driving the car over the rumble strip on the side of the road. Nearly as soon as the car has stopped, Adam flings himself from the car and doubles over on the side of the road. Gansey throws the car in park, and jumps out of the car himself.

The night air reeks with the sour scent of bile. Adam is still curled in on himself, shaking helplessly.

"I can feel everything in my head. It's so loud." Adam presses the heels of his palms to his forehead. The skin is turning white from how hard he's pressing on it. A muscle jumps in Adam's jaw from how tightly he's clenching his teeth.

Gansey reaches out to grab Adam's arm, and Adam flinches. Gansey freezes. Pulling his hands close to his chest. "Adam?"

Adam gulps a shaky breath. "I'm fine. I'm fine." He scrubs his palms over his face. He stands back up. Turns to face Gansey. "I think Cabeswater's calling."

* * *

 

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Ronan is sitting at a deserted intersection, watching the lights above him flick through their cycle. He clenches and unclenches his fist while trying to bite down on his smile.

Tonight is the best kind of night.

On nights like tonight, he feels like he could make another version of reality from the energy that lives beneath his skin. He grips the steering wheel of his BMW tighter, and looks around. Kavinsky should be here soon. It's an unofficial standing arrangement they have: full moons, stop lights, cars going fast.

Ronan can feel the rumbling bass from the stereo through the soles of his feet. He watches the light above him flick from green to yellow to red. He always feels the most settled in his skin when he's drenched in adrenaline with his foot pressed to the gas pedal.

From down the street, Ronan sees the white nose of Kavinsky's Mitsubishi dart erratically down the street. His heart surges. The music from Kavinsky's car crashes against his music, and the air gets fuzzy from the interference. Kavinsky pulls up right next to the BMW and gestures at Ronan through his open window. Ronan rolls down the window.

"You just gonna sit there like a bitch?" Kavinsky's smile is a knife. "Or are you gonna drive?"

Ronan unsheathes a knife-smile of his own. "I'm gonna kick your sorry ass, you Bulgarian mobster piece of shit."

The light above them shifts from green to yellow to red.

"Hope you're ready to lose motherfucker!"

Ronan rolls up the window, hearing the hiss as it closes. He shuts off the air-co to feed the engine more.

The opposite light changes from green to yellow.

"In your dreams," he whispers as the light above him turns green.


	11. Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

The Pig has decided that working is for lesser beasts than itself, and so Gansey is laying across the backseat of his finicky car with both doors open, trying to catch the wisps of early morning breeze. It's still technically only the beginning of summer, but the weather has really taken the idea of summer to heart and it’s been uncomfortably warm.

At this point, Gansey can't tell if he feels cool from the air or from being so tired it hurts a little to keep his eyes open. Either way, it's not miserable being stranded out here on the back roads of Henrietta. The mountains up to the north are misty and undefined. Gansey watches as the stars fade and the sun peeks over the horizon, painting the sky a watery pink.

The peace of it shatters like glass as Gansey hears the muffled sound of eighties pop music blaring from a set of car speakers. It's getting loud and louder as the car approaches.

He sits up in annoyance. Behind the Pig, a shiny silver car pulls up and parks, the music stopping as the car is turned off. The driver's side door opens.

"Gansey! We really need to stop running into each other like this."

It's Henry Cheng. Despite the early hour of the morning, his hair is spiked so much that it looks a bit like he'd stuck a fork in an electrical outlet and the electricity had done the rest.

"My--" Gansey's voice is creaking and rusted from disuse, so he clears his throat and tries again. "My car died on me again, and so did my phone." He wants to list other things that have died, like his self confidence and normal sleeping habits, but even as surreal as this moment feels, Gansey knows better than to say that sort of thing out loud. “Could you jump my battery?”

Henry looks vaguely apologetic, and says, "I'm afraid that's a no-can-do, Ganseyman, considering that one, my car is electric and b, I don't actually have any jumper cables. I can, however, give you a ride if you want. Just tell me where you need to go."

Gansey thinks about everyone back in Henrietta. He thinks about Ronan with Kavinsky and he thinks about Adam with Cabeswater and he thinks about Blue, Blue, Blue.

He clears his throat again to have something to do, and says, "I don't know."

Henry's eyebrows flick upwards briefly. "Well. That sounds like step one. Let's go."

 

Not half an hour later, they're sitting in the framework on the side of Henrietta's water tower. Henrietta is spread out below them like a painting, all the less than perfect bits of it made beautiful by the distance and the clean light of the morning.

Gansey hates to be the one to ruin a moment, but he's still a little confused and more than a little sleep deprived, so he asks, "What are we doing up here, Henry?"

Henry looks at Gansey out of the corner of his eye. "Our ideas of the past are shaped by the people who wrote the histories. You and I, we're here right now to talk about how we want to be remembered."

Gansey's heart surges in his chest. "But what would you even know about that?"

"You don't actually know all that much about me. Do you, Gansey?" There's a tightness in Henry's eyes as he looks out. "You wouldn't, truthfully. I know how to tell a convincing story. Here's a secret on faith: I'm actually terrified of heights."

Gansey looks at Henry's press lips and white knuckles holding onto the railing. "What are you doing up here then?"

"Ah, you want that story." Henry's breath hisses as he breathes in from between his gritted teeth. "Okay. Okay."

It sounds like he's trying to convince himself rather than responding to Gansey. Henry takes a deep breath, and begins again. His voice is as light and airy as ever when he says, "When I was a kid, my mother went mad—that's what she calls what happened: going mad—for a year and got involved in some shady business practices in occult antiques, supernatural paraphernalia, and the likes.

"The thing about dealing with criminals is that they commit crimes. Especially if you're standing between them and what they want." Henry bites his lip. "They took me after school, and my mother didn't even notice I was gone until they'd called her. They took me out to an airfield after several hours of keeping me tied up in the back of their car, and my mother was there. She didn't even look at me the entire time we were taking off in a helicopter. She just kept arguing with the man.

Henry huffs a sarcastic laugh. "Apparently, he didn't like that, and so he tried a different tactic. The man dangled me out of the side of the helicopter. Have you ever felt the sickening feeling of having nothing below your feet and nothing to hold on to? No? Well, from personal experience, I can hardly say I recommend it.

"That's not the worst part though. Sure, that's the part that left me with a crippling fear of heights that's going to be a part of me for the rest of my life. No, the worst part is that my mother  _ haggled _ with him over the price of my life. It would have been a sign of weakness to give in immediately, and she knows how to do smart business." Henry sighs shakily. "I know the man would have dropped me without a second thought if my mother hadn't given him what he wanted."

Everything that Gansey could think to say falls monumentally short of this vague and nebulous idea he has of what should be said. He settles on,"That's terrible."

"It really is." Henry's eyes are distant, not looking out, but looking in. "Ten was a rough year. I couldn't speak at all for months. I had panic attacks for years afterwards. Anything taller than about a foot left me reeling.

"But that's just how things are for me. I can either let it stop me or work through it, and I decided many years ago that I didn't want to live my life being afraid of things. If you can't not be afraid, you need to be afraid and happy. It's hard to stop letting fear control your life. Hard, but absolutely necessary." Henry looks at Gansey then. It's a canny expression, full of knowing and being known. "You'd know something about that, wouldn't you Richardman?"

Gansey is momentarily speechless. He reaches for the words, and finally the right ones fall into his hands. Honesty calls for honesty, and so he says, "I'm afraid of hurting the people I love."

"Oh, Gansey." Henry sighs in a way that somehow managed to convey fond exasperation. "I'd be worried about you if you weren't. That fact that you're afraid means that you care about people, and caring is never a bad thing. Besides, I think everyone is always a little afraid of that. That's human nature."

It's an answer to a question just to the side of what Gansey actually wanted to know. He furrows his brow and tries to clarify the problem. "I'm afraid that I'm going to do the wrong thing when someone looks to me for answers."

"Oh. It's  _ that _ sort of an issue. Right." Henry looks upward vaguely, tilting his head slightly. It seems like Gansey's not the only one with trouble finding words. "Okay. So. Leaders choose to lead. You know this. I know this. Everyone knows this. But," Henry says as he puts his hands on Gansey's shoulders, and makes an uncomfortably intense amount of eye contact, "The thing everyone always forgets is that followers choose to follow too. Your friends have chosen to follow you, and you have to let them. Trust in their trust in you."

"I don't know if I can do that."

"Well, Gansey, I don't know if you have a choice."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since this is an AU, I took the opportunity to do whatever I wanted to. Sorry if this is a little jumpy, but I did want to stop writing before this became an actual novel.


	12. History has its eyes on you

Gwenllian had faded to fit into the house like she'd always lived there. Maybe it said something about the lives that the women of 300 Fox Way led, that having an actual faerie take up indefinite residence in their attic is only a minor inconvenience. It almost definitely said something about their lives, that this actual faerie wasn't the strangest thing that had ever happened here.

Blue is sitting on the kitchen counter currently, watching with a sort of detached horror as Gwenllian rummages through the fridge to find things to mix together and eat. She eats like a pregnant woman, delighting in strange and often really gag-inducing combinations of flavors. Right now she's putting sriracha and green garlic-stuffed olives into a bowl of chocolate ice cream. Blue can't look away even though she can feel herself cringing at the idea of eating something like that.

Persephone floats into the kitchen wearing a leather work apron. Blue can't fathom why she'd need something like that, but it's covered in fresh singe marks, and Persephone's long white hair is braided into a sort of complex knot on the back of her head. As she opens her mouth to ask, Persephone cuts her off with a gentle, "Tea?"

Which, having seen the tactic before, Blue knows is as close to a firm reprimand Persephone generally goes. Blue closes her mouth. Opens it again. "Sure."

Persephone bustles around the kitchen, putting the kettle on the stove and pulling out the tin of Darjeeling that Blue knows she's particularly fond of and setting out the mason jar of honey from one of Maura's mysterious colleagues a few towns over.

Halfway through, her hands go still and she stares blankly at the cabinet in front of her. When the kettle starts whistling, Persephone doesn't move at all. Concerned, Blue goes over to turn off the stove.

"Persephone?" Blue waves her hand in front of Persephone's face. Persephone doesn't move. Finally, just when Blue is thinking she might need to go get her mom, Persephone blinks rapidly and shakes her head.

"Oh dear," she says.

Footsteps thunder down the stairs, and Maura flings herself into the kitchen, using the doorway as a pivot point. "Did you feel that?"

"Feel what?" Blue asks, but her mom isn't even looking at her. She's looking at Persephone. Persephone nods.

Calla walks in just behind Maura, and immediately says, "This better not be actually happening."

Maura turns to look at Calla. "I don't think there was ever a chance it wasn't going to happen." Blue gets the impression that it has something to do with her, because everyone in the room is so intently not looking at her that it's completely obvious they want to.

The tense quiet is enough to pull Gwenllian away from her concoction. She tilts her head back and looks at them with a sly smile written on her face. "Ah, this is about her faerie gift, then."

Maura furrows her brow. "Faerie curse, actually."

Persephone makes a humming noise that sounds like disagreement.

Calla laughs a single sharp laugh. “Faerie gift, faerie curse. They're all the same. They're all more trouble than they're worth in the end.”

It's like they've suddenly started speaking another language right in front of her.

"Hey! Will someone please tell me what's going on?"

Persephone, Calla, and Maura have a conversation without words. Blue does her best to look very adultlike so they'll take her seriously.

It seems like they can't quite agree on whether or not to tell her, and so Blue is a little surprised when Persephone ends the discussion by saying, "There's a king and he's going to die."

Calla snorts. "Kings are always dying. This one isn't so special."

"No, this one is part of a different story," Maura says, shaking her head slightly.

All of those answers are supremely unhelpful, and so Blue feels the need to ask, "Okay, but what does all that have to do with me?"

All four women in the answer simultaneously, looking at each other annoyedly for interrupting: "true love's kiss" (from a wry Maura), "the queen on a chessboard" (a murmur from Persephone), "knife fighting" (from a grumbling Calla), “action and inaction!” (a more helpful shriek from Gwenllian than Blue had honestly expected).

Blue rubs at her forehead. "I have no idea what's going on. Please use actual words and tell me what's going on."

Maura throws her hands up in the air, searching from words in the atmosphere, before finally saying, “Everyone knows that kings are only what they mean to other people.”

She says that like it answers everything, like it's something obvious, and so Blue says, “I'm pretty sure history would disagree with you.”

“I'm pretty sure history wouldn't.” Maura looks at Blue over the top of her glasses. “If people didn't decide to keep a king, he wouldn't be king at all. The French had the right idea of it.”

Calla snorts. "Which time?"

Maura elbows Calla, and continues, "A ruler's power comes from the people who follow them, not from inherent characteristics of their own. The power they have is the power they are given by others."

"No. A king's power comes from acting when others will not." Gwellian rolls her eyes. "But that's not the right question."

Persephone nods her head idly, like Gwenllian has the right idea after all.

"So," Blue asks, speaking slowly to let her thoughts collect, "what is it that I need to do?"

"Now that," Gwenllian says, smirking at her, "is the right question."

Before Blue can fully process what's happening, Gwenllian grabs Blue's hand, and pulls her upstairs into the attic.

 

In the few days she's been living up there, she's managed to completely transform the space. Swathes of rich dark fabric fall in drapes over the walls, sweeping like the branches of trees in the forest. There are plants everywhere, covering every flat surface. Blue knows for a fact that the zinnias in the red pot belong to the old cat lady down the street. The attic air is stuffy and thick with some sort of smoky perfumed scent. In a corner, there's a pile of blankets snarled into something resembling a nest. Finally, Blue looks at what her eyes have been purposely not seeing.

In the center of the room, two standing mirrors face each other. From where Blue is standing, she can see them unfolding infinitely into each other's depths. Something flickers at the corner of her eye, but when she turns to look, nothing is there. Dread settles heavily in her stomach the longer she looks at the mirrors, but she doesn't really know why.

Gwenllian starts pushing at her shoulders, propelling her towards the mirrors. Blue tries to dig in her heels, but the height advantage Gwenllian has on her is enough to have her tripping across the floor, coming to an unsteady halt between the mirrors.

When Blue looks in the mirror, all she sees is herself. The infinite mirror world has vanished. She turns to look at Gwenllian with her eyebrows wrinkled in obvious confusion. "Why—"

“Mirrors! That is what we are!” Gwenllian cackles her spine chilling cackle, the one that always makes Blue think of carrion birds picking at carcasses.

"Okay," Blue says, stretching the word out uncertainly.

"When you hold a candle in front of a mirror, it's twice as bright. That is what we do! We make things brighter, louder, stronger." Gwenllian leans close to whisper in Blue's ear. "Witches are powerful because we can control what others see. Witches are made of power because of what we are, not what we can do."

The idea zings in her chest, touching a part of her heart that she hadn't known she had. It reminds her that sitting around while others pursued their own greatness is unappealing. That she is made of greatness too.

"Although," Gwenllian says, considering, "what we can do is powerful for other people."

"And what is that?"

"We control their fates. We show them that which they cannot see about themselves." Gwenllian grabs both of Blue's hands. "This is what you need to do. You need to know yourself to know others."


	13. Getting to know you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, more lowkey suicidal ideation and a reference to a previous suicide attempt.

It's a late night, but Ronan has found himself inexorably drawn to the flickering fluorescence of Boyd's garage. Crickets are chirping outside. Adam is currently laying under an ugly green minivan. Ronan perches precariously on a wobbly metal stool.

He can't seem to sit still though, and so he gently nudges Adam's thigh with the toe of his boot. Over and over and over again, trying to get a reaction—any reaction—from Adam.

Finally, Adam wraps his hands on the bumper and pulls himself out from under the car. His face is placid, but his voice is annoyed when he says, "I know Gansey told you not to hang around Kavinsky anymore, but that doesn't mean you get to take your frustration out on me. I've had enough frustration taken out on me to last a lifetime, and I don’t need yours now."

Ronan had been grinning smugly, but the reminder of Adam's parents is enough to sober him immediately. He doesn't want to apologize, but he feels like he needs to, so he just grunts and keeps his limbs to himself. He chews at the leather bracelets threaded around his wrists, the earthy tang of them sharp on his tongue.

He keeps waiting for Adam to go back under the car, but Adam's just sitting there and looking at him with keen eyes. The feeling of being watched crawls over Ronan's skin like ants.

"What?" Ronan says through the leather between his teeth.

Adam says nothing, he merely stands up, and gently pulls Ronan's arm away from his mouth. He turns it so that the soft pale skin of Ronan's forearms is facing up. Beneath the bracelets, ropey white scars criss cross over Ronan's skin. Adam traces over them with a gentle fingertip. Ronan hardly breathes.

"Nothing's ever going to be different unless you make it different, you know."

Ronan jerks his arm out of Adam's hands. "The fuck's that supposed to mean?"

"Gansey thinks you're okay now because he can't see it anymore. But you're not, are you?" Adam cracks his knuckles and starts packing up all the wrenches on the floor near the car. "You're still deciding if you want to stay or not."

"That's—I'm—uh." Ronan has to pause to collect his words. "It's not like that."

Adam looks him steadily in the eye. "So you don't want to die?"

_ Not all the time. _

But Ronan can't say that out loud, and so he just says nothing. Adam's still looking at him, but he can't look back. He can feel everything he's not saying take up space in the room, filling every corner like a noxious fume.

Finally, Adam says, "For what it's worth, I think that your life is worth sticking around for." He has his back to Ronan now as he packs up his messenger bag and hangs it over his shoulder. "I hope you decide it's worth sticking around for too."

Flicking off the lights in the office, and in the garage, he gestures for Ronan to follow him out into the parking lot where the BMW is parked. As they reach the car, he turns back to Ronan, eyebrows furrowed searchingly.

"No one can kill your demons for you, Ronan. You have to do that on your own." Adam adjusts the strap of his messenger bag, the strap digging into his shoulder. "But I'm here for you when you do."

Adam grabs his bike from where it's locked to a portion of fencing, and is gone before Ronan can find any words.


	14. Getting to know you, reprise

Blue is lacing up her tennis shoes when the phone rings. She ignores it, knowing that someone else will most likely answer it, if it's important. The phone rings and rings and rings, before finally going blessedly silent.

The low murmur of someone's voice filters down the hall from the phone/sewing/cat room. And then Orla bellows at the top of her lungs, "BLUE! IT'S ONE OF YOUR RAVEN BOYS!"

Blue rolls her eyes and walks into the room. "You didn't have to yell, you know. I could hear you just fine."

Orla shrugs. "Yelling is cathartic sometimes."

"Whatever." Blue holds her hand out for the phone, which Orla plops into her hand before flouncing away in a whirl of long dark hair. "Hello?"

"Blue! If you're not busy today, we could go look at that old church you mentioned a while back." There's a turn up at the end of his sentence that's annoyingly endearing.

Something vaguely rosemary scented wafts up from downstairs, and Blue has to scrunch her nose to avoid sneezing at it.

"As I remember it, I told that to Ronan, not you."

"Oh. Neither of us were aware it wasn't supposed to be public knowledge."

He's doing that thing where he talks really formally when he's uncomfortable. Immediately after thinking it, Blue isn't quite sure when she gained this knowledge. Blue twists the phone cord around her fingers.

"Anyway. I'd like to go with you," she says, practically hearing him perk up, "but I have a date with a pair of rowdy German Shepherds and a fat chocolate lab. Sorry."

"Oh. Okay." Gansey sounds like a balloon with the air let out of it. Deflated.

He sounds so disappointed that Blue finds herself saying, "But I should be done in an hour, if you still want to go then."

His voice is twenty shades brighter. "Oh! Okay!"

Blue rolls her eyes, and says, "Bye, Gansey."

 

An hour later, and Blue is wiping the sweat off her forehead with the neckline of her shirt as she walks back to her house. She's unduly exhausted, but it's not like the dogs were jumping out of their skins with energy today. The sun is oppressive. She's already dreading the sensation of blistering vinyl on her bare skin.

When she finally gets back home, Blue doesn't bother to change out of her dog walking attire, both because they're going to be hiking in the forest, and because Gansey is already parked in front of her house. His bright orange Camaro is so conspicuous next to the faded blue paint of 300 Fox Way.

Gansey is leaning against the side of it and scribbling furiously in a weathered-looking journal. Something is different about his face, and it takes Blue a moment to realize that he's wearing a pair of gold wireframes. Gansey doesn't seem to notice she's there, and so she clears her throat gently.

Gansey startles, arms flailing as he tries not to fall on his ass. "Blue!"

Blue has to bite her lip so she doesn’t laugh at him. "Are we ready?"

"Absolutely."

 

The A/C in the Camaro is still broken, and so they drive down the road with the windows down. It's impossible to hold conversation, but Blue loves the smell of summer drifting over the corn fields. Blue holds her hand outside the window, tilting it like a wing. Sometimes, she has to shout to make sure Gansey knows where they're going, but other than that, she just enjoys the wind running through her fingers.

Once they pass into the forest, the refreshing rush of cool shadows over Blue’s skin feels like jumping into a pool. Gansey's car bumps along the rough road, and a spring digs into Blue's back as the frame rattles. The trees thin out up ahead, and Gansey slows the car to a gradual stop in front of the old church.

The ruins of the church ring with a sudden quiet when Gansey turns off the engine. Everything is held its breath.

Gansey's door opens with a painful creak, shattering the quiet. "This is the church?"

Blue rolls her eyes and says, "No, Gansey, these are not the church ruins that I was talking about."

He raises his hands in a gesture halfway between placation and surrender. "Lead on, then."

The path between the road and the church is hard to find among the thick summer grasses, but Blue leads them along what looks the most like a walkway. The grass is nearly tall enough to brush the backs of Blue's arms.

The inside of the church is cold and smells of rot. There's nothing inside but rubble and the shattered remains of ancient pews. A tree grows spitefully in the corner. Gansey still pokes around in all the nooks and crannies, hoping to find something. Blue can see disappointment collected in the downturned corners of his mouth.

"Maybe there's something in the woods?"

Gansey shrugs. "Maybe."

They walk outside, heading into the underbrush. A tree limb lays on the ground, so Blue breaks off a branch to push away the brambles snagging at her shirt.

A gust of wind shifts the trees with nothing but gentle rustling, their branches allowing a single sunbeam to land on Gansey's head. In the golden light, he is so beautiful Blue can't breathe for a moment. In this light, she could love him. And so she says, before she even really thinks about it, “If I ever kiss my true love, he'll die.”

Gansey glances up from the ground to look at her, the side of his mouth quirked up enough to reveal a dimple in his cheek. "Really? Is that all?"

She punches him in the arm. "This is no laughing matter, Richard Gansey. This is kind of a big deal for me."

Gansey puts his hands up to fend off more hits, his quirked mouth morphing into a full-on smile. "No, no. I was laughing because it's funny that both of us seem to attract death."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's kind of a long story, and it's kind of sad, so I'm not sure you want to hear it."

"Come on, Gansey. You can't dangle something like that in front of me and then not  _ tell  _ me!"

"Okay." Gansey runs a hand through his hair. "So the thing you probably need to know first is that I'm severely allergic to bees. Like, deathly allergic."

"Gansey!" Blue's eyebrows furrow. "We are literally walking in a field. Where bees live!"

His smile thins, and he goes a little pale. "Believe me. I know."

They walk a while longer in silence.

Gansey opens his mouth, and Blue can see that he's tasting the words he wants to say. Blue keeps glancing at him as he works them around his mouth, hoping to catch the first glimpse of them when they finally appear.

Just as he looks like he's about to say something, Blue trips over a tree root and tumbles to the ground. Gansey reaches out to help her up, but as soon as she's standing, he jerks back and yells, “Jesus Christ!”

Blue follows his eyes to the base of the tree, and feels her own heart leap to her throat.

Tangled up in the roots of the tree is a human skeleton. Or at least, a skeleton that Blue assumes was human.

The roots are twined all through its ribcage. One of its arms is flung out, finger bones still buried in the dirt. Whoever it was hadn't died calmly.

Blue feels a scream building in the back of her throat, but before it surfaces, she feels something like hands on her shoulders as a voice whispers,  _ It's alright, now. The forest is taking care of me. Nothing is wasted in the forest, not even me. _

The voice sounds like a teenage boy, and Blue would have thought she'd imagined it except for the shocked expression on Gansey's face.

"Well shit."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't be including Noah beyond this point, because he is dead. He is here for Reasons that happen later.


	15. INTERLUDE: Maura Sargent

_ Once upon a time, a woman moved to a town on the edge of a faerie forest with her two sisters. _

_ They lived in the town, and none of the bad things they'd been warned about ever happened because they were all careful. _

Maura had been living in Henrietta for two years now with Persephone and Calla. At this point she was no longer in the in-between space of visitor and resident. She lived here now. She was from here now.

The forests just outside of the town were rich and dark and beautiful. You could feel the sunlight in the valley making the plants grow. It was December, and there were still flowers in the sheltered places beneath the bare branches of the trees. Most of it was asleep for the winter, but Henrietta still felt more alive than any place Maura had ever been before.

A breath of cold air darted around her. Maura buried her face back in the scarf Persephone had knit for her, and adjusted her hold on the sketchbook and set of colored pencils she'd brought with her. The life around her almost made her forget it was December, but that wind sure didn't. Overhead, the branches crossed each other in an intricate lattice.

Maura walked up and saw a clearing in the forest just ahead of her. The full moon wasn't for another week, but she was from Henrietta, so she knew better than to go into the clearing. Finding a bared root just outside the clearing, she sat down and settled her things around her. Maura pulled a small dish out of her coat pocket, and filled it with a bit of honey. After all, she knew what to do, and it was better to be safe than sorry when it came to the Folk.

Time drifted away from Maura as she sketched the forest around her: the gnarled trunk of a tree, a blue jay perched on a large grey stone, the pink of a foxglove poking through the dull brown of the dead leaves on the forest floor. Everything was so lovely that it begged to be remembered.

A man's voice broke the calm silence by asking, “Pardon me, miss, but are you lost?”

Maura jumped at the sound of his voice, her pencil skittering across the page. She swore under her breath and began trying to erase the mark without messing up the rest of her drawing.

“My apologies. I didn’t mean to startle you,” the man said, his voice deep and musical. It was a nice voice.

Maura looked up from her drawing hesitantly. The man was very tall, and he wore a threadbare red shirt under a light brown leather coat. He had a concerned look on his face. It was a nice face.

She searched for her voice for a bit as she stared at him. Once she finally found it, she asked him, “Why are you out in the forest?”

The question she was really asking was why he was in the forest alone. Most of the rest of the townsfolk tended to avoid the forest, never venturing further than the very edges, and never going by themselves. Maura felt like all that was a bit of overkill in terms of caution. The Folk weren't dangerous as long as you kept your wits about you.

“Same as you are, most likely. Enjoying the beauty it has to offer.” The man looked down, and then glanced up at her through his absurdly long eyelashes. “Today has been a good day for finding beauty.”

Even though Maura knew what he was trying to do with his compliments, her pride still gave a little flare, and she felt warm.

Letting her eyes drift over him from worn boots to tousled hair, she responded, “You're not too bad yourself.”

His mouth twisted into a crooked grin that promised mischief.

“What would you say if I asked you to walk with me?” He held out a hand to her. His fingers were like the branches of a tree, long and brown with knobby joints. “I promise I'll behave.”

“I'd tell you it's a good thing my type is roguish cad.” Maura packed up her things, and stood without taking his hand. “Let's go.”

The man held out his elbow for her, and they walked arm in arm down the path.

“Would the lovely lady like to tell me her name?”

“Oh no. I know better than to tell strange men my name.” Maura looked at him out of the corner of her eye, and bit her lip. “Tell me yours first.”

“That's fair. You can call me Artemus.” He laughed lightly then, a sound like a bird chirp or a bell. “It's even my real name.”

“I'm Maura.”

The man—Artemus—turned to her and gifted her a broad smile. “I’m glad to have met you, Maura.”


	16. Revel-ations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the pun, but like I said, this is the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written.

_ Romeo: I dreamt a dream tonight. _

_ Mercutio: And so did I. _

_ Romeo: Well, what was yours? _

_ Mercutio: That dreamers often lie. _

_ —Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4 _

 

After a long day spent locked in the Henrietta Public Library's genealogy section, Ronan wants nothing more than to lay down and not look at books again ever. Something about libraries always makes him sleepy, and today is no exception.

Gansey is still going on and on about the new path for his research when Ronan sees something that makes him stop.

"Gansey."

Gansey raises concerned eyebrows and says, "Hm?"

"Gansey. The door is already open."

"That's impossible," Gansey says, despite the evidence that it was, in fact, possible.

Ronan rolls his shoulders to get them loose, just in case. "Let's walk carefully, and make sure all our unexpected guests are gone."

Ronan eases open the door and flicks on the lights. Inside, the room is in a state of controlled chaos, the result of a very intentional vandal. He has his suspicions about who broke in already.

All of Gansey's books are opened to the middle and stacked in piles. His mattress is completely flipped over. The mint plant is lying among scattered clods of dirt and the shards of its broken pot. Little plastic cards are strewn all over the floor. When Ronan picks up one to look at it, his own face stares back at him from a Virginia state driver's license with a wildly inaccurate birthday.

"Who do you think did this?" Gansey sounds worried, beneath his angry tone.

Ronan doesn't answer, and gestures towards his room. He figured that message would a little more pointed there. 

And, sure enough, a knife pins a torn sheet of notebook paper to Ronan's bedroom door. The note read, "Come have some fun tonight, if you can ditch the old man." It's signed  _ XOXO -K _ .

Gansey's eyes are narrowed dangerously, in a way that has Ronan smiling. Gansey, gloriously cold, says with a smile like broken glass, "How would you feel about paying Kavinsky a little visit?"

Ronan smirks back.

 

They drive to the fairground in Ronan's BMW. Ronan doesn't want to risk the Pig in a place where there's a distinct possibility that a bottle rocket might get shoved in the exhaust pipe.

Gansey isn't asking how Ronan knew where to go, and Ronan was glad for it. Gansey rules in a place of light and order, holding court from his sun drenched kingdom. Kavinsky rules the night, the darkness, the wild places. Ronan doesn't like it when his food touches.

Ronan's music hits discordantly against the filthy bass pouring out of the car ahead of them. He jerks the car to a stop and throws it in park. Gansey is subtly different in the flickering light of the bonfires. Energy shimmers beneath his skin like a film of gasoline on the road, and he's about to set himself on fire. He catches Ronan looking, and nods, a haughty and dismissive gesture that has Ronan grinning. Gansey flings open the door, and pulls himself from the car with one hand on the roof. Tonight is going to be fun for sure.

The crowd seems to part around Gansey as he makes his way towards the source of the music. Ronan follows, just a step behind him. The music is nearly unbearable when they reach the knife painted side of the white Mitsubishi it's pouring from.

Kavinsky is holding court from where he's languidly draped across the hood of his car. He is a skeleton with skin, a starving wolf. He is a nightmare with claws, and Ronan's heart thuds dangerously.

When Kavinsky catches sight of them, he slithers off his Evo and stands with his arms outstretched. "Dick! To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"

Gansey looks around him at the party swirling around them, gloriously disdainful.

"Stay away from my place." Gansey is all ice and steel, voice like the edge of a sword. "You don't go there again."

"I go where I want to, Dick Gansey, and don't you forget that."

Gansey glances over at Ronan but he's already moving. His fist connects with Kavinsky's mouth, splitting his lip and getting blood all over Ronan's knuckles. Kavinsky folds in half, guarding his soft underbelly while he spits out a mouthful of blood. Ronan takes another step towards him, but Gansey raises a hand, the universal gesture for 'down boy'. Kavinsky starts laughing a wheezing laugh that seems scraped up from his lungs.

"It's a good thing, Dick Gansey," Kavinsky says through a smile with red red teeth, "that I know what your dog wants."

Two cars play chicken behind Kavinsky's head. Ronan watches them get closer and closer, before one of the cars loses a side mirror as it swerves out of the way. Onlookers jeer at it. With some difficulty, Ronan pulls his attention back to Gansey.

"Oh?" Gansey smiles sharply, all threat and no humor. "And what is it my dog needs?"

Kavinsky pulls out a joint and lights it. He blows the first lungful of smoke in Gansey's impassive face. Leaning close to Gansey's ear, he whispers, "He needs to be let off his leash. Wild things don't deserve collars, especially not the one you've got on him."

The sight of Kavinsky's bloody lips so close to Gansey's throat makes him want to hit something. Instead, he says, "Hey asshole, I'm right here. Don't assume you've got me all figured out, you arrogant bastard."

"I do know what you want, though. I know  _ you _ ." Kavinsky's eyes flick towards Ronan's lips and he has to resist the urge to chew on his lip. He lowers his voice, pitching it so only Ronan can hear, and says, "We could rule this town, just the two of us."

Ronan's stomach drops, and he says, panicking so much he doesn't even think about it, "If you think you're important to me, you've never been more wrong. You're just an easy way to blow off some steam. You need me way more than I need you."

Hurt flashes over Kavinsky's face before being covered by an intimidating blankness. "So that's how it is?"

"That's how it's always been."

Kavinsky's jaw works, and he says, "Get the fuck away from me."

When Ronan doesn't move immediately, Kavinsky shoves at him and yells, "Get the fuck away from me!"

Gansey puts a hand on his shoulder to lead him back to the car, but Ronan shakes it off. As they get into the car, he sees Kavinsky taking swigs from a bottle with his back to them. He feels a twinge of something like guilt as they drive away.


	17. Lessons in Witchery

The forest was pushing at Adam's senses. He can smell the rich greenery, can see flashes of leaves at the corners of his eye. He can hear the sounds of the forest in his deaf ear. Cabeswater whispers urgently to him in a language he doesn't know, but feels like he should be able to understand anyway.

_ Go _ , it seems to be saying to him.  _ You need to go. _

Adam can't figure out where it wants him to go based on this information alone, so he takes his bike out and tries to pinpoint more exactly where he needs to be going. It's like a giant game of hot and cold, where Cabeswater calls more loudly to him the closer he gets to its mystery destination for him.

By the time he stops his bicycle in front of 300 Fox Way, the noise is practically deafening. It's hard for him to focus on one task because Cabeswater keeps pulling at his attention. He manages to make it up to the front door. Before he can knock, Persephone opens the door. The noise in his head gets impossibly louder.

"That's quite enough of that," Persephone says. Adam thinks she's speaking to him, and is about to apologize, when she continues, "He's here now, so leave him in peace."

The sound recedes all at once, and the silence is ringing. Adam is breathing harder than he realized.

"I think you'd better come in for some pie," says Persephone.

 

A few minutes later, and he's sitting across from Persephone at her kitchen table with a truly enormous slice of freshly baked pecan pie. The richness of the chocolate chips is a strangely warm sort of comfort to him.

"Now," Persephone says, setting a cup of tea by his hand, "what is the problem?"

Adam stops. The words are stuck right on the tip of his tongue, but he can't seem to pull them together correctly. "I don't know."

"If you don't know, it's usually a good idea to ask." Persephone pulls out her faded deck of tarot cards, and hands it over to Adam.

He slides his plate and teacup aside, and holds it gently in both hands. "I can't read these. I'm not a psychic."

Persephone looks at him over the edge of her teacup as she sips. Waiting. She's waiting. For what? For him to suddenly open his third eye and start seeing the future?

The cards warm in his hands, sending his fingertips buzzing with nervous energy. "How would I even go about doing this?"

Persephone smiles.  _ This is what she was waiting for _ . "Pull three cards, and we can try to figure out what's going on."

He does.

Three of Swords. The Chariot. The Magician.

Persephone looks at the cards and back up at Adam, then says, "Ah."

"What?"

"There are multiple parts of you pulling in different directions. We need to make sure you can balance them all."

"I am balancing them all." When Persephone gives him a disbelieving look, he says, "I'm doing the best I can right now. It's just hard to know exactly what I need to do sometimes. Faeries are something kinda new to me."

Persephone lays her hand on his arm. "Let's work on that, then. You need the right tools to work in this new world. There's a ritual that can help with that."

"What would this ritual do?"

"It will align your insides with your outsides. I must warn you though," Persephone's voice is mournful, “your friends might not understand you when you come back. Mine didn't.”

The black of her eyes is a mirror, and in them Adam sees the sharpened edges of own his face. He didn't even understand himself yet. It's no wonder no one else could understand him. He's been fighting so hard for a version of himself that no longer exists. It feels like a sickening waste, but all he can feel is the relief that he's finally going to turn himself into something magical and powerful. That he's finally going to be able to understand himself.

Persephone clears her throat gently, as if she knows what he's thinking and doesn't want to interrupt. "Once you do this, there's no going back from it, Adam."

"There's been no going back for a while now."

She nods serenely, then says, "You should probably have some more pie."

 

They sit under the drooping boughs of the weeping willow tree, at the bend of the creek about half a mile from 300 Fox Way. Adam and Persephone are facing each other, cross legged and still. A dark mirror rests on the ground between them, and their shoes are somewhere off to the side. The leaves trailing from the branches swirl around Adam in the breeze. The blobs light shift across his skin; the light in the clearing ripples and bend around him.

It smells like growth. He closes his eyes as he breathes in the scent of warm dirt and sunshine.

A knot in his chest loosens as he breathes out, slowly, calmly.

"Are you ready, Adam?"

He opens his eyes. "I am."

"Okay. Look into the mirror."

Adam leans over the dark glass. All he can see inside it is himself, all pinched eyebrows and worried mouth.

"Persephone, I don't think this is working," he says. Or tries to say. His mouth in the mirror isn't moving as he's speaking. Adam glances up, startled. He's no longer sitting with Persephone by the creek. He's somewhere else entirely.

Misty pines crowd around him. Everything feels skewed, like a special lens held in front of his eyes. He picks a direction and starts walking, since there doesn't seem to be any particular way he's supposed to go. The trees feel like they're leaning in towards him, their needles brushing softly against the bare skin of his forearms, his neck, his face. If Adam didn't know better, he'd say they were wishing him luck or offering comfort to him.

The trees are thinning ahead of him. The green of the pines gives way to yellowed and prickly grass. Tufts of it poke through the cracked and dry soil. Rusted pieces of metal are strewn across the ground. Ahead of him, the dirty and battered sides of a double-wide trailer loom out of the dimness. Through the window, he sees the silhouette of a shouting man.

Adam blinks, and he's inside. He's watching the man shout at a little boy. The boy is Adam. The man is his father. His father is shouting at him. The Adam of now knows what comes next, but the younger version of himself doesn't. Adam watches his father throw the punch, and he's caught in the moment.

He always seems to be circling this moment: his father's fist, his body, this first moment of knowing what it felt like to have your father hit you. It lives inside of him, lurking like a wolf just outside the light.

The moment releases him, and he's back in a forest. Adam has been here before, though. He recognizes the arching boughs of the massive tree spreading above him. Cabeswater whispers to him in a language that feels like one he's heard before, but can't decipher.

"What are you trying to tell me?"

The whispers grow more intense. It sounds like a warning. Adam pauses, unsure how he got that meaning.

"I don't understand."

Adam hears a twig break behind him. He turns. A white elk walks out of the darkness, its fur luminescent. Everything else seems darker, looking at the elk. It’s glassy eyes are black as it looks at Adam. Somehow, Adam knows he needs to follow the elk.

It turns and walks back into the gloom, and Adam walks with it. The elk turns its head to look at Adam, and it starts to move faster once it sees that he's with it. Soon, Adam is running to keep up with it. His sides are heaving from the exertion, toes digging into the soil with every stride.

And then Adam is the elk, his hooves turning up clods of dirt behind him as he races further into the forest.

Beside him, a she-wolf lopes out of the forest, running with big, hungry steps, eating up ground with every bite of her claws into the ground. For a short moment, Adam is afraid, the instinctual fear of someone used to being prey, but the moment quickly fades as the wolf keeps pace beside him, her dark fur glinting in the light off his pelt.

The darkness grows thicker around them, drawing close like a second skin.

A raven swoops and twists through the branches above his head. Adam can only catch short glimpses of his dark feathers between the leaves on the trees. They three are all straining to one single purpose.

The trees around them turn ugly and twisted, poisoned by whatever lived beyond the darkness. Adam smells the sickly sweet scent of rot beneath the pine. Something is not right here. Ahead of them, a set of sharp stone gates loom. They're going too fast to stop. They have to keep going.

Adam gasps.

He's back in his body, gasping for air. He feels like he's just swum up from the depths of the ocean. All his muscles are tensed, and he tries to relax them as he catches his breath. His hands and feet are caked in dirt. The brightness of the sunlight is blinding after being stuck in the dim. He squints his eyes, and Persephone just watches him.

"Do you know what you need to do?"

Adam wipes his forehead with a clean patch of skin on the back of his hand and considers it. "I think I do."

* * *

Monmouth is still and quiet, the golden late afternoon light shining in from the wall of windows. Gansey's been sitting here long enough to see the shift of the light. Something about his conversation with Kavinsky last night is sitting sour in his throat.

Ronan has been locked up in his room since they'd gotten back. The sound of his electronic music has been a quiet and simmering presence in Monmouth for hours now. He'd worry about Ronan not sleeping, but that feels like a giant case of pot and kettle. The steady throb of Ronan's music is winding the air more and more tensely.

It feels like something is about to go catastrophically wrong. Gansey can't quite decide which would be worse, though: that everything actually is about to go wrong, or he's getting bad again. The world has been on the brink of ending since he was ten years old, and at this point it might be easier just to get it over with than to keep dreading it.

Now he's gotten himself worked up enough that he feels vaguely sick. He tries to breathe deeply, to ground himself in the present. (His cell phone, the model of Henrietta, a pair of dirty socks, his mint plant, the book he was reading. The warmth of the sunlight, the wood floor, the breeze of the A/C, the cotton of his shirt. A car driving by, Ronan's music, his cell phone ringing.)

Gansey blinks, then jolts into action once he realizes that his phone is still ringing. It's the house phone at 300 Fox Way.

"Hello, Jane!"

"It's Adam." Gansey hears the staticky sound of Adam's sigh rushing over the telephone. "I think something is going to happen tonight."

"Should I come get you and Jane?"

There's a long pause. "Yes, I think so." Another pause, in which Gansey almost hangs up. "And bring Ronan with you."

Gansey hears the sound of the receiver click on the other end of the line. He grabs his keys from the pocket of his dirty jeans, and puts on his shoes. Before he can knock on Ronan's closed door, Ronan bursts out from the room and momentarily looks taken aback by Gansey's presence. Ronan looks at the keys in Gansey's hand, and goes to grab his own shoes.

"Where are we going?" he asks, lacing up his boots.

"I'm not quite sure."

Ronan raises his eyebrows. "Well then. This should be fun."

Gansey hums noncommittally as they start to walk to the Pig. Above him, dark clouds fill the sky. A storm is brewing in Henrietta.


	18. Midsummer Party

Adam feels the energy of the party like the stifling heat: it presses in on him from all sides, leaving him no room to breathe. The night is alive, prowling.

Kavinsky and his pack of wolves have set at least half a dozen bonfires. Pillars of white smoke billow from the burning green wood.

Smoke is filling the valley like pouring water into a bowl. The murky cloud of it smells like someone has hit a skunk with their car.

The thundering music is so loud it's nearly a physical presence, it's filthy lyrics and throbbing bass weaving around the bodies of the party goers.

"We should split up to keep an eye on things," Gansey says. He has to yell to be heard over all the noise.

And then he's gone, and Adam gets whisked away by the push and pull of the crowd. There are bodies on all sides of him, brushing up against him with every beat of the music. He wouldn't call it dancing, though, so much as grinding. The intoxicating atmosphere of the night was enough to lower all inhibitions.

People move all around him, and Adam feels like a rowboat being tossed around by the ocean. He's unmoored, cast adrift in a place that would just as soon sink him as bring him to shore.

Everything is reduced to flashes of sensation: a hand on his back, red lipstick, dark skin, blue shirt, the smell of beer sloshing out of a plastic cup. Adam is trapped behind a layer of glass in his own head. He's supposed to be doing something?

Fuck. It's so hard to think when he can feel the ebbing of the forest beneath the pressure of the humid summer air. The crowd jostles and heaves past each other, all bodies on bodies and heat. The bass from the speakers thumps through the soles of his shoes. The smell of weed in the air is making him dizzy.

He needs to get out of here.

The crowd seems to move in ways, so Adam swims sideways through it like you’re supposed to do when you're in a riptide. Sideways, sideways, until he pops free of the press of bodies, and walks closer to the fuzzy line where the party meets the forest.

Adam goes over to one of the coolers there, and pulls out a can of soda. The icy coldness of it is a jolt to the palm of his hand, and so he presses it to the back of his neck. A drop of condensation slides off the can and onto his skin. It's a little bit quieter over here, the noise not as much of a physical presence. His chest loosens enough for him to take a breath. He pops the tab on the soda, taking a moment to survey the crowd while he is on the outside of it.

At the other end of the field, Kavinsky stands on the hood of his Evo. He's staring at something in the thick of the party, his expression something simmering and hungry. Adam follows his gaze, and his eyes catch on Ronan.

Ronan is incendiary.

In the light of the bonfires, the sharp planes of his face paint him something feral. This is the Ronan that Gansey always hates seeing. Ronan typically uses his otherness as a shield, but he's at his most frightening on nights like tonight, when he uses it as a weapon. I am not like you, says the flash of his eyes, and I never will be.

It makes him even more otherworldly in the heavy Midsummer's air. The crowd writhes around him, the revel as insubstantial as smoke, but Ronan stands still in the center of it all and stares at the flames, the realest thing about the night. Ronan is everything natural and inhuman, sharp and wicked and lovely.

Adam hates that Kavinsky probably sees it too.

Ronan suddenly turns his head towards Adam, catching his gaze and holding it. Somehow, Adam feels like he shouldn't be the one to look away first. Adam gestures to the forest by tilting his head slightly.

The flashes catch, and Ronan's eyes are burning. With a deliberateness to his walk that makes Adam think of a hunter stalking prey, Ronan starts to make his way through the crowd. Adam clutches the can a little tighter; nothing is real tonight except the things you can touch.

Adam waits a few moments, then walks into the forest, trusting that Ronan will be right behind him.

The air of the forest feels like a fresh breath of life, all lush vegetation and fragrant summer flowers. He brushes past a wisteria, the thick and heady scent following him as he walks even further. The pounding bass of the party is fading more and more, but it's being replaced by the pulsing energy of the forest in Midsummer. It thrums in him like a second heartbeat; he feels too big for his skin all of a sudden.

Moonlight shines brightly into the middle of a sudden clearing, and Adam stops. He closes his eyes and listens to the sounds of the night. Off to the side, he hears the sound of Ronan deliberately making noise as he walks towards Adam. Footsteps come ever closer to the clearing, and then stop. Adam opens his eyes.

Ronan grins wolfishly, and light from the full moon glints off the points of his teeth. His incisors are slightly too long to be human, making him something wild and terrible. Adam's skin tingles, and he's not sure whether it's from nerves or anticipation.

Adam himself is the most human thing in the forest, all hot singing blood, with the worn fabric of his shirt sticking to his skin and sweat dripping down his spine. He leans back against a tree, drawing strength from its steadiness. Ronan is standing a few feet in front of him, just watching as Adam takes another sip from his soda.

“Did you want something, Parrish?” Ronan steps closer to Adam, close enough that Adam could feel him breathing. “Or were you just watching me?”

Ronan's voice rumbled low through his chest, and Adam felt his breathing stutter. Adam's heart leap and thundered in chest, and his soda can slid from his suddenly slack fingers. His knees give a little, and he sags against the tree to make sure he stays upright. He has to close his eyes for a moment to try and come up with something to say. The energy in the night makes it impossible for him to manage that while looking at Ronan. “I didn't like the way he was looking at you.”

“And how was that?”

“Like he wanted to eat you alive.”

Ronan leans forward then; Adam only knows this because he feels Ronan's nose dragging along his jawline. He tries not to gasp.

“You'd know what that looks like, wouldn't you?” His voice purrs right near Adam's ear. Adam shudders. “You look at me the same way. Admit it, Adam. You want me.”

He can't think. Voice rasping, he manages, “And what if I do?”

Instead of answering, Ronan tilts his head, and Adam feels Ronan's breath ghosting over the skin of his neck, raising goosebumps.

And then Ronan suddenly freezes.

“Do you hear that?” His voice is low and urgent in Adam's ear.

It takes a moment for Adam to get his brain back online, but once he does, he freezes too. Voices. Jingling metal. He listens harder. He hears words in a familiar sounding language, but he couldn't figure out what it was or what they were saying.

Ronan breathes out the answer, face fearful. “Faeries.”

They stay pressed together and still until the voices pass entirely by to make sure that neither of them are seen. Ronan is trembling. By the time they're certain the troop has passed, Ronan has progressed to full on shaking. He moves away from Adam, and wipes his hands over his face.

His eyes are panicked, and his voice is desperate as he says, “It's the Unseelie Court, Adam. He's called the Unseelie Court here.”

Adam feels dread coiling in his stomach like a lead weight. “We have to get back. Now.”

* * *

The muggy summer air swelters even though the sun was been gone for hours by this point. The stickiness of it on her skin leaves Blue feeling particularly unnerved. It was a storm about to break, with the precursors of lightning prickling all along the ground. All the people around her had faces that seemed to blur into one face, no one leaving any solid impression but "stranger". Gansey had been with her until moments ago, when all of a sudden she'd turned around and he'd vanished. It shouldn't be freaking her out as much as it was, but knowing that did nothing for the heavy feeling in her gut that was ringing all the alarms.

Heart pounding, Blue pushes through the crowd. She needs to find someone she knows, but she's stuck in this dense crowd of sweaty partygoers. Someone's elbow clips her cheek. She yells, "Gansey," again and again like he's going to be able to hear her all of a sudden. Everything is so overwhelming, and helpless tears prick at the corner of Blue's eyes.

Like an answer she wasn't entirely sure she was looking for, the music stops, strangled suddenly by the squealing of the speakers. The crowd mills around restlessly, the murmur of voices humming in the quiet. Blue takes the opportunity to stand on her tiptoes and yell, "Gansey!"

A voice answers from behind the wall of people. "Blue!"

Before Blue can take more than a few steps towards his voice, a drum beats loudly from somewhere in front of Blue, a loud, resounding sort of beat that sounds vaguely menacing and malevolent. The crowd goes completely silent and still.

The drum beats again.

A high, wavering girl's scream rings out uncertainly over the crowd, freeing it from its stillness. Everyone starts moving all at once, trying to push past one another, trying to get away. Fear turned them into mindless animals; there was no consideration of direction besides away. The drums were the steady backtrack to the throb of panic in Blue's throat.

Shoulders slam into Blue, knocking her backwards as the crowd streams past all around her. She tries to look for Gansey in the crowd. "Gansey!"

And then he's in front of her, breathing harder than he should be. He puts his hands on her upper arms and looks her up and down, obviously checking for injury. Miraculously, the crowd parts around them like a river would for a rock.

Satisfied she's not bleeding or broken, Gansey says, "Blue, you have to get out of here. There's a faerie army at the edge of the forest."

She grabs his hands and starts to pull him in the direction the rest of the crowd is going into. "Let's go then."

He closes his eyes and bites his bottom lip. He exhaled shakily and says, "No, Blue. Someone has to make sure the town stays safe."

"So we call the police or something! You can't face down an army by yourself." She can feel her eyes getting hot and itchy.

“Blue. Please look at me."

She stops. His eyes are overly bright in the dimness.

“I have to do this,” he says.

Gansey runs his thumbs over her cheeks, wiping away the wet streaks. His hands are warm on the sides of her face, and she smells mint. He leans his forehead against hers, and their breaths mingle in the space between them. Gansey leans forward, and gently kisses her. All she had time to do was think  _ oh _ , with feeling that was like a stone dropped into a lake (sinking, settling), and then Gansey was pulling away from her.

“Gansey, no!”

But it's too late. Gansey is already turning towards the approaching army, facing the oncoming waves of people head-on.

“Stop.” Gansey's words ring out, larger than they should be, and everyone stands abruptly and completely still once more. He strides across the field, sweeping regally over the broken beer bottles and fallen partygoers until he stands directly in front of the leader of the faeries. The faerie man eyes Gansey appraisingly, but no one says a word.

“Leave now, and do not impede on this town any further. It is not your place to be here, and it never has been.”

His words were ridiculous and outdated, and yet they were still completely a  _ Gansey _ thing to say. They sounded like they'd been pulled from a time long gone, a time where kings and heroes were the same men, and swords came out of stones for the worthy.

Blue can’t hear the response of the faerie, only seeing his lips move. Gansey is solemn, brow furrowed and mouth set, listening carefully. Finally, Gansey nods hesitantly.

The faerie grins widely, and then holds his palm out to Gansey. A dark, shimmering fruit rests in it. Gansey's face is complicated for just a moment, but then he takes the fruit from the faerie man and eats it. As soon as he eats the fruit, he collapses limply to the ground, pale and lifeless.

Blue screams before she's made the conscious decision to.

She is frozen in horror and shock as the faerie man heaves Gansey's body over his shoulder. The man turns to walk back into the forest, his army following. Between the flash of lightening and the thunder a moment later, the entire troop is gone.

And they've taken Gansey with them.


	19. INTERLUDE: Gansey

Once upon a time, there was a king.

He wasn't always a king, though. 

Owen Glendower grew up during a turbulent time in the history of Wales, you see.

The year was 1400. The English were battering at the door, and when the Welsh people looked for someone to lead them through the turmoil, Glendower stepped forward to unite them against their common enemy.

Glendower faced impossible odds, conquered insurmountable challenges, and became a hero in the eyes of his people. Rumors and myths of his magical powers followed him wherever he went: Owen Glendower, the Raven King, the true King of Wales.

Despite all his power, he could not outlast all his enemies. And so, when he faced the English on the field of battle, he fell to them. After all, it was the duty of a king to accept his own death to save others.

But that is not the end of the story.

When he fell, he did not die.

When he fell, he only slept.

 

Centuries passed, and his story became legend: Glendower, the king of Wales, set to return and free his people from the tyranny of the English. The Welsh: an oppressed people telling stories of a savior-king, passing them from grandmother to grandchild and on and on for generations.

The Roses did battle, new worlds were found, constitutions bound the monarchy, the world started to run on coal and steam. Time marched forward. Progress paved over the wild places of magic. People started to forget.

Thousands of miles away from the place of Glendower's birth, another young king-to-be was born to a ruling family.

And that's where the real story begins.

 

Once upon a time, a little boy died.

 

I know it's a bit unusual to have a beginning about an end, but please bear with me.

The start of our story is not actually all that long ago, nor all that far away. It was the Summer Solstice, seven years ago, in Virginia.

There was a party, or a ball, or a coronation. It doesn't matter, really. This family was an old family full of power and nobility, and their son was no exception. Power was at play here, (not that it matters to our tale yet), and its opulent fist choked the evening air.

The night the little boy died was hot and oppressive. Humidity rolled off the Potomac and into the neatly manicured lawns of the kingly estate. The sky pressed down on the partygoers, heavy as stone. (Heavy as a secret.)

Children should neither be seen or heard at events like these, so the little boy ran off into the woods with the rest of the little princes and princesses. The point of the game was not to be hidden or to be found; the point of the game was to be away.

And away he went, brushing past the soft green leaves of the low hanging branches, past the brambles and the ivies. When he looked behind him, he could no longer see the lights from the lawn of the party. The sound of the adults' conversation faded into a low murmur as he walked.

The grass whispered at him under his shiny black shoes as he wandered further into the forest.

Shush. Shush. Shush.

There was a sudden crunching noise, and the boy felt a stabbing pain in his ankle. When he looked down, bright golden hornets covered the ground. And then there was no ground, only a swarming cloud of hornets.

The hornets coated his skin, his hair. They crawled into his screaming mouth, his ears. They stung him everywhere, and it felt like fire.

His heart stuttered, and then stilled. The hornets still stung him everywhere, and it felt like death.

It was a tragedy: a bright young life snuffed out too soon, all his potential destroyed. But that's not the interesting part of the story.

 

Once upon a time, a little boy came back to life.

 

As he lay dying on the forest floor, gasping for air, a voice whispered into his ear, "You will live, little king, because I need you. Find me. Find the Raven King. In seven years, you must die once again to set me free."

A blink later, the hornets were all gone, and Richard Gansey III breathed the first true breath of his second life.

 

Seven years is not a lot of time to live the rest of your life, but Gansey tried anyway. He traveled as much as he could, let himself fall in love with every new place. Tried not to fall in love with any people, since he'd lose them anyway.

Tried not to let the crippling anxiety of knowing exactly when you were going to lose your future crush him as he tried and failed to sleep at night.

He tried and tried, but then Henrietta happened. Then Blue happened.

 

Gansey was nearly a king in his own right now, but his seven years were up. He'd been living on borrowed time for nearly half of his life, drifting aimlessly on the winds of his supposed destiny.

Screw that.

He knows with a terrifying certainty what he needs to do. Gansey is taking back the wheel of his ship. If there are rocks near shore, then so be it.

A king makes sacrifices, and Gansey is ready to make his.


	20. Dead but not gone

Persephone is standing in the entrance hall clutching an armful of towels when Blue crashes through the door of 300 Fox Way. Following right behind her are two of her boys. The knight and the magi. Ronan and Adam. The three of them are wearing strange armor and cloaks. Blue is holding a pair of daggers.

The lightning flashes. They're all soaked to the bone. Pale faces and shocked eyes. Shaking hands. Water drips down their faces like tears; some drops are tears. Water. She knew she'd grabbed the pile of towels for a reason.

“Mom!”

Blue slams the front door, the sound lost as a clap of thunder rattles all the windows in the house.

“MOM!”

Just before Blue starts to clatter up the stairs, Persephone steps forward into the light with the towels. Blue jumps at her sudden presence, and then starts talking frantically at her. Persephone is having a difficult day with words, and so she doesn't hear what Blue is saying. She knows though, that this is about their king. Glendower.

No, this time it's Gansey. She's pretty sure.

Blue, Persephone says. Or thinks she says. There's a difference there that's sometimes hard to figure out. She doesn't always know what side of her brain the words happen on.

She tries again. “Blue.”

This time, Blue hears her, because she stops talking and starts to listen, a worried look on her face. Persephone gestures to the reading room. “You three should dry off here by the door, and then take a seat. There's nothing to be accomplished now by yelling and screaming and rushing.”

Adam's face crumples. He lost. He wasn't clever enough. He's never clever enough.

Wait. No. That hasn't happened yet.

It was sometimes a difficult thing to keep track of what she was supposed to know and what she hasn't learned yet. She shakes her head. Maura and Calla come down the stairs together, one right after the other. They're both wearing pajamas, for some reason.

Oh, that's right. It's very late at night, and that's when people sleep.

Calla is frowning. Persephone thinks that this means she's annoyed, or else it means she's delighted. “What's all this ruckus about? Has someone died?”

The children fall silent, and Maura sucks in a breath. Persephone can feel the wind whistling through the gap between Maura's two front teeth. She sees a glimpse of a man who is very grey walking in through the front door.

No. That doesn't happen on this string.

It's time for someone to say something, and Persephone does. “I'll get some tea for us all then.”

Persephone leaves them all by the door as she walks back into the kitchen. The kettle is on the stove already, with little puffs of steam coming from it every so often; it's nearly boiling. Someone must have put it on recently. Oh, that's right. It was her. She put the kettle on.

The kettle whistles cheerily at her, like the color orange. She turns off the burner and sets the tea to steeping in the teapot. She thinks mint tea might be a bit too cruel for Blue and her friends, and so she decides a nice chamomile and lavender tea would go better with the night.

She pours three cups of tea from the pot, and stacks them one right on top of the other. She carries her precarious stack into the reading room.

Persephone catches the tail end of what was presumably a fairly long explanation. Maura is patiently saying, “He died, yes. He's your true love, and you kissed him.”

Blue and her friends are protesting this pronouncement vehemently, their words tripping over each other, and then picking back up to keep on running. The room fills with sound as it swells in the air.

Calla snaps them, her sharp voice cutting through the noise, "The boy is dead, and that is that."

The room goes utterly and uncomfortably silent. Flashes of a boy with a crowd and a sword, dead but not gone, are dancing across the back of her eyelids.

Persephone clears her throat gently, and everyone turns to look at her with varying levels of confusion. She looks around the room, meeting each person's eyes in turn. “He's dead for now, true. But nothing says he can't come back.”

* * *

Blue is the first person to overcome the shocked confusion at Persephone's pronouncement. "What does that even mean?"

Persephone raises an eyebrow. "Kings never _really_   die, now do they?"

"We saw him die, though," Ronan says through gritted teeth. He's all barely leashed tension, and Blue might have been frightened of him if she didn't know him so well. "He ate a poison fruit from the Court. He's stuck with them until they get tired of him, or they all die. It's nearly impossible to get something from the Court that they don't want to give."

"Well," Persephone hums quietly to herself, "We should probably do a reading then."

Maura, Calla, and Persephone settle around a scrying bowl, all holding hands. Even though they all look different, something beneath their skin is the same. It's like a steady energy or a quiet strength. Blue is  uncomfortably reminded that in stories, it's always witches, and there's always three.

They breath in sync like a three headed creature as they stare into the bowl, brown hair touching blonde hair touching black hair. In. Out. In. Out.

Their breathing slows more and more as they drift further and further from their bodies. Blue has seen this a couple of times, so she's sort of used to it. Adam has done this himself. Ronan, though, looks queasy at the sight of their barely breathing forms.

With a simultaneous gasp, Maura, Persephone, and Calla leave the vision.

They're communicating in that silent language of theirs, all tilted heads and narrowed eyes and raised eyebrows.

Finally, Maura turns to them and says, "He's sleeping like his king. _She_ has them both."

Adam speaks for the first time since Gansey had been taken. "She?"

Calla purses her lips. "Yes. The Queen Under the Mountain."

Blue could tell that the entire title was capitalized based on the way Calla had said it; whoever this woman was, she was no mere queen.

"The way is long and the path treacherous, but you must follow it to the end," says Persephone, folding her hands delicately on the table.

"You have a difficult choice in your future, Blue." Maura looks uneasily into the scrying bowl one more time. "I don't know if there's a good option. Only one that you can live with."


	21. The Art of War

By a wordless and mutual agreement, they all ended up at the Barns. Henry Cheng had miraculously ended up outside 300 Fox Way just as they were leaving, and so he followed behind Ronan's BMW in his Fisker.

None of them had said a word since they'd gotten here. They were just sitting silently in Ronan's living room. Henry had never been privy to this side of Ronan Lynch before, and so many things about Gansey and Ronan suddenly made sense in a way they never would have before; the story is so much clearer now.

The house is one made for comfort, all golden rays of sun and warm painted across the furniture, but Henry can see the hints of wildness tucked into the shadowy corners. It's a bit overwhelming seeing all stories he'd loved as a kid coming true right in front of him: kings and fairies and queens and magic all right within reach.

He can't quite decide if he feels incredibly happy or sickeningly upset. Henry finally gets to see magic in action, but Gansey was lost in the process. It doesn't seem real that Gansey is dead. Magic always has a cost in stories, but Henry somehow thought that magic in the real world would somehow be less brutal.

Henry looks around him and sees this cost frozen in shock and sadness on Blue's face. Pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead, he wracks his brain for a solution. _Any_ solution.

One idea feels right, and he keeps circling back to it. So he says, "I think we can go ahead and do the most obvious thing here."

"Which is...what?" Ronan asks, voice harsh. "Go up to the faeries and say to them, 'Give back Gansey he's ours'?"

"Exactly." Henry smiles at him softly. "Are you his court or aren't you?"

Ronan is still all clenched fists, stony shoulders, tight jaw, but Blue tilts her head to the side and raises an eyebrow.

Adam rubs at the back of his neck, lost in thought, and says, “Fortune favors the brave.” Adam pauses for a moment. “And the clever. The Folk are no different. We could do it.”

Blue bites her bottom lip, and says, “We're going to have to be braver and more clever than we've ever been, if we have any hope of getting Gansey back.”

“We will have to be even better than that,” Ronan says. He's chewing on the leather bracelets at his wrist.

Blue snaps back at him, “If you have anything that can help instead of just being a Debbie Downer, now would be a great time for that.”

"You don't understand, Blue!" Ronan stands and paces agitatedly around the room. He looks like he's trying to pull the words he's looking for out of the air, a feeling Henry can relate to. Finally, Ronan manages to string together his thoughts enough to say, “Making bargains with faeries is like gambling. The house always wins. This is going to be the hardest thing any of us have ever done, and the odds are not in our favor.”

“We have to try anyway.” Blue looks Ronan steadily in the eye. Her voice gets soft, and Henry can hear the thinly masked desperation in her voice. “Besides. Sometimes people hit the jackpot despite the odds being against them.”

The space where Gansey should have been sucks up all the air in the room.

Henry clears his throat a little bit, mostly just to bring everyone back to the present. Blue blinks more rapidly than usual, her eyes bright.

"Let's talk strategy," he says, "so we can bring our king home."

* * *

They move to the kitchen table for the strategy meeting. Somehow it feels weird to Blue for them to be discussing battle plans in what seems to be the homiest room in the entire house. The light in here is a sort of diffused and buttery yellow, and Blue can practically see the thoughts of war piercing through the peacefulness with jagged black shards.

Adam is the one to actually lead the strategy meeting. Henry admits to being best with abstract thought and new concepts, but Adam is definitely the best at making plans and plots. She'd always known Adam was smart, but this is something of an entirely different caliber; Adam has a mind like a chessboard, always thinking three, four, ten moves ahead, always searching for a way to win.

First, they start talking about what they all want to accomplish. Finding Gansey, obviously. Then the question becomes how best to get him? Let's consider the situation as a whole.

Everybody contributes what they know to fill in the blanks. Blue talks about her father and what she knows about him. Adam talks about what Cabeswater has been whispering to him. Ronan tells them the faerie stories his mother and father had told him growing up. Henry talks about what he knows from his own research in folk stories and mythology.

Blue can see a plan starting to take shape in the space around what they already know. They talk about what they don't know, and how to account for those risks in moving forward. Suddenly, Henry interrupts with an urgent thought.

“Wait a minute. You guys need some sort of weapon or something. Faeries have got all their magic, but you are all human.” Henry pauses, reconsiders. “Well, sort of.”

Blue has no clue, and Adam looks briefly stumped, but Ronan is contemplative. He looks like he's having an internal debate.

Finally, he says, “I might have something for that, actually.”

* * *

Ronan leads them out to one of the smaller barns on the far side of the house. It is not made of sheet metal like all the other barns; it is a smaller version of a classic barn, all white-washed wood planks on a low and flat building. The doors are different too, with their oak surface covered in intricate carvings of vines and flowers.

Chips of rosewood litter the floor, and their scent sweetens the air. Woodworking tools rest on pegs in the wall. It seems like their blades are the only metal in the entire barn. Half-finished carvings clutter the surface of the workbenches. Not a barn, then. A workshop. A loud swear catches his wandering attention.

Reaching beneath a set of hanging cabinets and rubbing the back of his head, Ronan drags out a large wooden trunk that is wrong in a way Adam can't pinpoint right away. All of a sudden, Adam realizes what had seemed wrong: it has no metal fixtures on it at all. The wood was carved and stained to look like it might have iron hinges and clasps, but the entire chest is made of wood.

Ronan is running his hands over it, not like he was trying to memorize it, but like he already knows and loved it, and is just now remembering how much. He pops open the lid with a complicated gesture that Adam didn't feel he quite caught. Inside the trunk is a parcel wrapped in leather.

As Ronan digs through the parcel, Adam looks around the workshop more. Women carved out of oak stand on the shelves near the entrance in rows like some sort of beautiful army, their wooden robes flowing behind them as though they were made of cloth. Leaning against the wall next to them is an elaborately carved staff. It's all knotting vines and blooming buds and delicate tendrils crossing over one another.

Behind him, Blue says, “Oh!”

Adam turns around, and sees Ronan pulling a waterfall from the trunk.

No, wait. It's a piece of cloth that looks a hell of a lot like a waterfall. It floats on Ronan's hands like it weighs nothing at all, and Blue is running her hands over its surface.

“Adam, come feel how soft this is!”

Adam walks over, the floorboards creaking under his feet. He kneels between Blue and Ronan, and strokes the fabric. It felt like touching nothing, or maybe like touching a cloud. His fingers buzz with a strange energy. He pulls his hand away and rubs his fingers together, like he could feel something lingering there.

He looks over at Ronan. “What is that?”

Ronan is rubbing the fabric against his fingers. “It was my mom's. One of the things she brought with her when she married my dad. It's a faerie made cloak.” He gestures at the rest of the trunk. “All of this is faerie made.”

“All of what?”

Handing the cloak off to Blue, Ronan reaches back into the trunk. He brings out item after item: beautiful curved bows, arrows with soft grey feathers, a green coat that looked like sunlight through leaves, leather armor shaped to fit a man's chest and arms, and on and on. The last thing he pulls out is a sword, all shining steel and a slender blade, its handle made of metal and bone twisted around each other.

With the ease of long familiarity, Ronan lays the sword across his crossed legs. Ronan catches Adam looking at him, and says, “Aren't you going to ask where this all came from?”

Adam remembers pen drawings on napkins. He remembers all the beautiful things Ronan has ever made. He says, "You made them."

It's not a question.

Ronan looks vaguely pleased. He's biting down most of a smile.

Henry breaks into the conversation. "Hold on. Rewind a bit. Lynch, you _made_ all this?"

Ronan's half smile disappears. "Yeah."

"How?"

"Easy." His lips twist into the sharp look he uses when he's about to fuck with someone. "I pulled them out of my dreams."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never explain this fully, but it's the difference between a Maker and an Unmaker. Pulling something from nothing, pulling things out of your dreams with nothing but a thought.


	22. INTERLUDE: Cabeswater

Once upon a time, there was a forest.

This forest had been around for a very long time, and would continue to exist for a long time. It was made of lovely animals and even lovelier trees to house them. Magic grew in the rich soil as well as the plants did. It was a place full of life and death and growth and decay, and it was beautiful. The forest loved its inhabitants and they loved it, and all was well.

Centuries passed in idyllic cycles, every year just like the year before, and over and over again.

One year, a group of strange animals entered the forest. The forest was surprised to see these strange creatures, as they had the ring of magic in them, unmistakable as the ring of a bell. The forest, being magic itself, was able to see this in them, and it loved them for it.

When the forest called out to these creatures, they called themselves the daoine sidhe, cast adrift from their homeland by a group they called "men". The daoine sidhe were lost and afraid, for they had no place to call their home anymore.

The forest took pity on them, offering them a place to stay within its boundaries. They gave the forest the name Cabeswater as a token of their esteem. The daoine sidhe began living in Cabeswater, and they loved it with their whole hearts.

The magic in Cabeswater became even stronger from their presence, for they knew how to cultivate magic like a crop, feeding it until it grew strong, until it grew deep. Cabeswater took this new magic and gave it back, caring for these beautiful magic creatures until the magic grew strong and deep within them too.

Cabeswater loved the daoine sidhe so much that it didn't notice when they gradually started drifting away from it. They would take from the forest, but they would not give. Cabeswater didn't notice the dwindling magic until it was almost gone. The forest loved its inhabitants so much that it went dormant rather than take what was left from them. It dropped its leaves like a tree in the winter, and the daoine sidhe forgot that the forest was ever something that loved them.

The sidhe grew strong on the magic they took from the forest, grew big and grew powerful. They grew an empire on the forest, building a new grand hall under the mountain.

As men had taken their home across the sea, so too did men come to their new home in the forest. The men sailed across the rough sea on boats made of matchsticks and flax, green and weary and afraid. They saw the magic rippling over the distant mountains and named them for their blue ridges. These men were known for what they could take from others. They took from the sidhe until they had nothing left, and now the men took from the folk living in the mountains. The sidhe watched in disgust as their old neighbors wreaked havoc on their paradise.

But the sidhe could not agree on the best course of action. They were a people bound by rules, bound by their ruler, and they could not agree on what they should do about the looming problem of men. The queen was old and wise. She had seen the rise and fall of men's great houses, had known the hearts of great men, and she kept her own counsel while her people tried to sway her one direction or another.

While the queen deliberated, her daughter Gwenllian kept a wary eye on their people. She did not care about the problems of men. She cared about the problem within their halls. A young one called Aisling was holding on to more power than most of them realized.

Most.

Gwenllian was best at seeing into other people, and she saw the darkness in Aisling's heart. She whispered in her mother's ear about the danger, but her mother paid her no mind. Gwenllian knew what she needed to do, and so she took a blade in her hand, and tried to cut the wickedness from her people.

But Aisling was stronger than she knew, and Gwenllian was trapped in a hidden tomb deep within the forest before she could do anything else.

With her last great obstacle out of the way, Aisling gathered her followers and her magic, and she claimed the throne. With her new crown, she took a new name, and called herself Rioghnach. She kept the queen's consort, a human king called Glendower, as a trophy, locking his body in a glass coffin as a testament to her power.

The kind of magic Rioghnach loved was a kind that warped and poisoned the forest. She held Cabeswater clenched tight in her grasp, and it hated the feeling of being plundered. The most important parts of a forest are underground, and so the forest reached out its tendrils. Further and further it grew them, reaching out, planting the seeds of something that would grow strong with time. After all, who knew better about growing things than a forest?


	23. Eye of the Tiger

_ Look to your kingdoms‒ _

_ I am coming for them all. _

_ —Elizabeth Hewer, from “Love Letters to Helen of Troy” _

 

Adam's been sitting cross legged for so long that his legs have started to tingle unpleasantly. He can't seem to let his mind go blank. Henry is sitting next to him and seems to be having no trouble at all meditating. Every time Adam tries to let his thoughts drift idly past, they always snag on the surface of his attention. He imagines his thoughts like clouds, but then he starts thinking about weather forecasts and if the sleeves of his winter coat will still be long enough.

"I can't do it, Henry."

Henry jolts, and then blinks distantly like he's just woken up. "Are you quite sure?"

"No, Henry, I'm not sure that my brain won't fucking shut up long enough for me to practice mindfulness or whatever." Adam runs his hands through his hair just to have the pulling sensation. "I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing."

Henry stands, and makes a gentle noise of consideration. He holds a hand out to Adam. "Let's go for a walk, then."

Once Adam's standing, legs as numb as he'd feared, Henry puts his hands in his pockets and walks towards the woods that make up half of the Barns' property.

The weather's just starting to get a little chillier at night, hinting at the colder weather to come. A cool gust of wind runs its fingers down the back of Adam's neck and he shivers, wishing he had a jacket as goosebumps cover every exposed inch of skin instantly. Henry is still wearing his Aglionby sweater, and is non-perturbed by the wind.

They walk for a little while without saying anything. Some kind of bird is cooing from one of the trees overhead. It's impossible to say whether it's a real bird or a dreamt bird.

Adam is still following that train of thought when Henry clears his throat and says, "Don't take this the wrong way, Adam, but you definitely strike me as the kind of guy who likes to have everything concretely in front of him. Molecular chemistry and E&M are probably not your cup of tea, right?"

"What does—"

"We've been going about this whole thing wrong. You need something physical to focus on." He pauses. "Focus on? Focus through? Either way, definitely what we're doing now isn't working, so we may as well try it."

Adam raises a skeptical eyebrow and says, "Like a magic wand or something?"

He sounds just as skeptical as he feels, but Henry brightens and snaps his fingers as he points at Adam. "Exactly! A magic wand!"

"I was joking, Henry."

Henry gives him a mildly offended look. "I wasn't."

"There are a couple of problems with that, Henry." Adam counts them off on his fingers as he says, "First of all, you're going under the assumption that magic wands are real, which is unfounded at this point. Second of all, we can't assume it would even work to help me direct some magical ancient forest. And third of all, where would we even find a magic wand? Pretty sure I'm not just going to find some magical staff in the hall closet—"

Henry leans forward to hear the end of the sentence, but Adam's already going back through his memory to try and remember the niggling thought that's been trying to resurface at the first mention of magic wands.

_ White wash and the smell of rosewood _ .

Adam looks up at a concerned Henry, and says, "I think I know where to find one."

Before Henry can comment, Adam is already running back towards the house, bypassing it in favor of the small white washed barn sitting in its shadow. The door is unlocked, and Adam throws himself inside.

And there it is, leaning against the wall next to the army of oaken women; its darkly burnished wood seeming to glow in the dimness of twilight. The carved vines on it seem to be shifting in the half light. It looks like a tool for magic.

A sort of reckless energy burns beneath his skin. He feels like he could do anything.

Henry is breathing hard when he comes to a stop at Adam's side. Adam glances at him briefly before grabbing the staff. A breeze comes from nowhere and shifts the wood chips littering the floor into a whirling tornado with Adam at its center.

Henry is grinning. "Now  _ that's _ what I call progress!"

Adam feels a kind of certainty settle into his bones, and he smiles back.

* * *

Ronan can pull things from his dreams, and that isn't even the strangest thing that's happened to Blue in the past couple weeks. She remembers how she was aching for some sort of excitement in her life just a few short months ago. Now, she's ready to collect all her friends and do nothing but be a normal teenager, and maybe take a long nap.

Ever since Ronan had shown them his father's workshop, they've been practicing and training to be strong enough to get Gansey back. It's a horrible feeling to make yourself wait when you want nothing more than to rush in immediately, but Blue can see the practicality of waiting. The waiting grates on all of them though. Blue has never been known for her patience, and she still finds herself handling the wait better than the rest of them.

"Again," Ronan snaps at her, words as sharp as the dreamt knives he'd given her.

At the beginning of this whole ordeal, she'd questioned Ronan's apparent skill with bladed weapons. The truth had come out in fits and starts, and Blue has only recently learned the whole shape of it: a house filled to the brim with untamed wildness, ruled by a fierce faerie mother and a wickedly clever father.

Blue rolls her shoulders, trying to work loose the tightness in them from fending off Ronan's blows. He's not taking it easy on her at this point, and she wouldn't want him to. Blue isn't quite big enough to really be able to fight without getting creative. In this case, "creative" is just a polite way to say "fighting so dirty that bystanders wince". Fighting nicely is only something you can afford to do if you're fighting for sport, and Blue doesn't have that luxury. She has no illusions about what kind of welcome they'll receive at the court of the Queen Under the Mountain.

Widening her stance into solidity, she readies herself for the next blow, shifting her grip around the wooden practice knives.

Before she's completely ready, Ronan rushes her, and the fight devolves quickly from there. It's not the noble kind of fight that seems appropriate for this sort of faerie tale, but Blue honestly can't find it in her to care.

She kicks at the side of Ronan's knee to try and get rid of his height advantage. He stumbles, and she hooks his ankle to put him on the ground. Blue hears all the breath whoosh from his lungs as he hits the ground hard.

Before he can get up, or even move, Blue rests some of her weight into putting a knife at his throat. Ronan's throat bobs briefly from the pressure on it, in an involuntary reaction before he grins at her widely and says, "I think we might just be able to pull this thing off."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this abbreviated training schedule feasible considering they are in high school? Would they actually be prepared?  
> My handwavey answer is yes because magic and also because faeries and also because self indulgent fiction


	24. One Day More

The evening before the Equinox, the silence in the house sits uneasily with Adam. He walks around, trying to find someone to talk to, or at least to be near. When he looks on the front porch, he sees Blue sitting on the front step and looking too small. He starts toward the door, but Henry is already sitting next to her. She leans her head on his shoulder. Adam's chest hurts again, so he go to look for Ronan.

The sun is just setting, casting a warm glow all throughout the house. Dust motes light up bright gold as Adam makes his way down the hall. He has to pause a moment. Everything in the house is so sure of its place, certain that it is wanted.

From down the hall, Adam hears the quiet rasp of metal. He follows the sound to a room at the end of the hall. The door is half open, and Ronan is inside, sitting on the bed and sharpening his sword.

Ronan goes still, nothing but a silhouette in front of the window. His sharp edges are sanded away, and he looks raw.

Adam sits next to Ronan. The bed dips under his weight, and Ronan tilts toward him a little. Adam can feel the warmth of Ronan all along his side, radiating in the scant space between them. He can feel when Ronan takes a breath.

Breathing in slowly, Adam breaks the silence of the room. “Are you afraid?”

Ronan doesn't look up from where he's holding the sword. His eyelashes brush his cheeks as he blinks. “Terrified.”

Ronan’s hands are shaking, and so Adam takes a hold of his hands almost before he's made the decision to. The skin of Ronan's palm is soft where Adam's thumb rubs against it. His hands are so warm.

Ronan is still looking at him, and so Adam lets himself look back. There is nothing casual about this moment. Adam wants to do something, but he feels caught in the space between them. Ronan leans towards him, and Adam feels a brief twinge of panic. But Ronan just rests his forehead against Adam's, and squeezes his eyes shut tightly. This close, Ronan’s is nothing but a blur. Ronan holds Adam's hands more tightly, and Adam doesn't want to let go. They breathe together for a moment.

“What happens if we can't get him back?” Ronan's voice is tight and strained.

“I don't know. I guess the best we can do is try," he says, his voice thick in his throat. "I think we can do it though."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because—" He swallows, trying to clear his throat around a suddenly dry mouth. "Because I trust you. I trust you, and that's enough."

A nervous exhilaration zings through him from speaking the words out loud. He doesn't just mean to get Gansey back, and Ronan seems to catch that.

"Adam," Ronan says, more exhale than word, as he leans forward and gently presses his lips to Adam's. The kiss, too, is only a shallow whisper of a thing, but Adam can hardly bear the gentleness. A gentle warmth like sunshine starts in his chest and spreads outwards until his whole body feels warm and glowy.

Ronan buries his face in Adam's neck as Adam hugs him closer. They sit wrapped up in each other, the room going dark as the sun finally sinks below the horizon.

* * *

When life gives you lemons, sometimes you just have to sit on someone else's front porch and have a minor existential crisis.

The knowledge of what they're trying to do sits heavily on Blue in a way that it hadn't before now. It's like all of a sudden her brain remembered that there are stakes, and deep consequences for failure. She's always been the kind of person who had trouble sleeping the night before a big event, and now worry is roiling in her stomach.

A board creaks behind her, and when she turns to look, Henry is walking towards her with a tightened expression Blue can't quite read.

"Hey. How are you holding up?"

"I'm doing just dandy." She tries for airy and cavalier, but she's too worried for it to sound convincing.

Henry sighs as he sits down next to her. "It's okay to be afraid, you know. After all, the only time you can ever be brave is when you're afraid."

"I know." Blue scrubs her hands over her face. "But this still fucking sucks."

He nudges her with his shoulder. "Hey. Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It's a part of the story, Blue. You're the hero in this story. You're the one who changes the course of history. The rest of us are just side characters."

Before she really thinks about it, she says, “Henry, you should come with us tomorrow.”

But even as she says it, she knows it isn't true.

As if to confirm, Henry smiles at her sadly, and shakes his head. “No, Bluebird. You know as well as I do that this quest doesn't belong to me. I wish I could go with you, but we both know fairy tales like threes best.”

“I wish you come with us, too.” A truth for a truth. Blue takes Henry's hand.

Henry looks down at the leaves surrounding his feet, curls his fingers more tightly around hers. His mouth works around words for a little while, and he only sounds a little strained when he says, “Hey, someone's got to stay here and watch the home front. Someone's got to be here who knows the story, in case it all goes pear shaped.”

“Even if it all goes pear shaped, I'm glad I got to know you, Henry Cheng.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Blue sees Henry get a little teary eyed, and grips his hand just a bit tighter.

Night falls, and fireflies flicker over the grass. An owl sighs from the trees. Henry is a warm presence at her side, and she takes a deep breath for the first time that day.

The door to the house opens, spilling yellow light onto the front porch. Adam peeks his head out, uncharacteristically shy as he ducks his head and says, "Hey, we made some food if y'all want some."

Blue's hip pops as she stands up. She and Henry follow Adam back inside.

The four of them sit at the kitchen table, throwing jokes and laughing too hard as they each try to avoid the idea that this might be a last supper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kissing is not really a thing I have much personal experience with and I'm sorry if you wanted more.


	25. Walking the Path

They drive to the forest, and park just at the edge of it, right off the chalky gravel road the county pretended was for maintenance. It's high noon overhead, the sun cutting through the chilly October air and warming Adam's face. Ronan had made the final call on when they should go to the forest, citing his reasoning as "I sure as fuck don't want to be caught there at night", which was a solid reason as far as Adam was concerned. None of them want to get stuck in the place that had stolen Gansey.

They walk into the very edges of the forest. Nearly immediately, the temperature plummets, the brightly colored leaves blocking the sun from hitting the forest floor. Adam's breath clouds in front of him, and he gives an involuntary shiver. Ronan looks much fiercer in the forest, all shaded cheekbones and dark eyes, his strange green coat blending in with the trees. Blue, if anything, looks even more fierce than Ronan. The grim and serious expression she's wearing says she'd cut out your heart if you crossed her. Adam shivers again.

"Which way, Adam?" Blue asks.

Adam pauses. Closes his eyes. Considers it.

He feels the tug of of the forest leading him towards the queen; with the path laid out so neatly, it simply becomes a matter of following his feet. The magic of the forest buzzes in the wood of the staff beneath his fingertips.

Adam looks around at the trees around them. They were still wading in the shallows. Like an ocean, the forest would only get deeper and darker from here, and would be filled with stranger and stranger creatures the farther they went. The murky depths loomed just before them, impossible to turn back from once they crossed into it.

He pauses a moment, considers Blue and Ronan. Their faces are set with determination and fire.

Adam takes a deep breath, and walks deeper into the forest.

* * *

Ronan and Blue are following closely behind Adam as he leads them further and further into the forest. They probably don't need to walk so close, but Ronan definitely doesn't want to get separated from Adam and Blue. The forest is malevolent in a way that Ronan isn't expecting.

Adam doesn't even seem to be aware of his surroundings. He keeps tilting his head from side to side as if he is listening to something that no one else can hear. His eyes are distant as he looks at something just beyond the edge of the clearing, or just beyond the edge of reality.

It's really unnerving to watch.

Ronan will just have to keep watch for all of them; he got his sword and he knows how to use it. He probably looks really twitchy, but he can't help but feel like something is about to go horribly, horribly wrong.

Every second where nothing happens winds him more and more tense, and he feels like an over-tuned string about to break. In front of them, the forest is dim beneath the trees. It could be a trick of the light, but the darkness seems to be  _ moving _ , like some sort of restless beast stalking its prey.

Great. Now he was just psyching himself out about this whole thing. Blue and Adam are still walking, without a hint of hesitation, towards the looming wall of darkness. He takes a breath, about to say something, and then decides not to. There's no room for anything less than absolute certainty, and he refuses to be the weak link.

The darkness feels like stepping into a thick fog, prickling at the skin on his face and swirling around him in billows. All the hairs on the back of Ronan's neck stand on end from the sensation of touch without touch.

Something in the darkness calls to him, tests his resolve. He pushes back at it with his mind, willing it to stay the fuck away from him. He hears the whistle of a something moving quickly through air, and immediately pulls Adam and Blue to the ground as something whooshes past the place their heads had been. Blue is startled, and Adam looks like he's been pulled up from the bottom of a well, all wide eyed and blinking in confusion.

A chittering and clacking sound stabs through the dark. Ronan tilts his head from side to side, trying to place the sound. It seems to be everywhere, filling all the empty space around them with menace. Blue is standing at his back, knife in hand. Adam steps away from the two of them, and holds a hand out in front of him, and slowly turns around in a circle before coming to a stop and pointing at one particular section of forest.

"There," he whispers.

Ronan doesn't ask if he's sure, just slashes at the space there with his sword. The metal snags on something and whatever it is lets out a horrifying screech. Ronan pulls back his sword and leaps backward.

Adam gestures at the sword with a hand flapping motion. Ronan squints in confusion at him. Adam flaps his hands more furiously. Ronan uncertainly holds the sword out to him, and Adam swipes a finger through the blood smeared on the blade, nodding to himself.

He makes a pulling gesture with his hands, and suddenly the darkness feels a lot less thick. Blue gives a full body shudder and asks, "What did you just do?"

"It's a thing made of twisted magic," Adam says, bending down to wipe his bloody fingers in the grass. "I just...untwisted it."

Blue voice got fainter with surprise. "Oh. Okay."

"We should probably keep moving. It's probably not the best idea to give them a chance to collect their courage again."

He pivots suddenly, like someone grabbed his shoulders and turned him. Blue gives Ronan a mildly alarmed look, and Ronan just shrugs back at her. Adam is acting weird, and so Ronan makes sure to keep an eye on him too as they walk.

It feels like they've been walking for miles and miles when the trees start growing more and more sparse around them. In front of them is the scarred face of a mountain, a jagged cave gouged into it like a wound.

If Ronan is being honest (and he generally is), the cave freaks him the fuck out, and he would gladly avoid it except for the fact that Adam is leading them straight to it.

Blue gives him another concerned look. Ronan makes sure his sword is in easy access, and sees Blue do the same with her knife. They were really doing this, apparently.

* * *

The cave is not at all like it looks on the outside; its jagged edges giving way to smoothly carved curves. Adam keeps walking down the gently sloping tunnel, and Blue has to watch her step to make sure she doesn't slip down the smooth surface of the floor. The air gets heavier and heavier the further down they walk, and Blue feels sweat beading at her hairline.

Adam draws to a stop in front of a beautiful arch. It's made of a stone subtly different from the walls of the tunnel around them, and Blue can imagine it whispering to her, "Come beyond, for that is where wonders lie."

Blue shakes her head. "Let's go."

As they pass through the arch, the three of them walk into a vaulted hall, the eaves disappearing into misty clouds overhead. The room is stuck somewhere between a cathedral and a tomb. It's hard for Blue to forget just how far underground they are here, and no amount of space overhead could possibly change that.

Ahead of them, a figure covered by gauzy black veils sits on a throne that looks grown from shards of obsidian. The hall is filled with strange looking creatures, some who look like humans with horns, and others that are more animal than they are anything else. All the creatures crowd and jostle to catch a glimpse of Blue, Ronan, and Adam. Despite the crowd, there is a clear walkway through the center that leads straight to the base of the throne. It is completely silent.

Blue takes a deep breath, and exhales, clouding the air in front of her. She walks forward, knowing that Adam and Ronan are right beside her. Their footsteps echo on the cold stone. Finally, they stand before the Queen Under the Mountain.

“You know why we are here.” Blue tries to keep her knees locked and her voice from shaking. “We want him back. You can't have him.”

The veiled figure on the throne stands slowly. All around them, creatures drop into low bows, hiding their faces in the floor. Blue resists the urge to crumple with them, and instead lets the solid presences of Adam and Ronan at her side give her strength. They can do this.

She can do this.

The figure reaches to the bottom of the veil with long fingers stained dark and twisted into gnarled curls. Like some sort of sinister bride, the figure lifts the veil so that its face is visible.

It’s a beautiful woman. Large dark eyes shine out from a pale face. Her red lips curl into a smile that is so saccharine that Blue shivers at the hidden malice in it.

“Ah. The psychic's daughter. Welcome to my court. We have been expecting you.”

Blue narrows her eyes. "How do you know who I am?"

"Oh darling." The queen's lips curl into a little moue. "I remember all the unfortunates I curse. I count them as I fall asleep at night. I remember you especially though."

She steps downs from the dais, and walks around Blue. "Your father was nothing more than a minor nature sprite, but he belonged to me nonetheless. You can see how I couldn't let that sort of crime go unpunished."

"We're not here to talk about my father. We're here to take back what you have stolen from us."

The queen reclines her head slightly to look Blue in the eye. "It's not theft if they willingly go. We made a bargain, he and I. You can't fault me for fulfilling my end of it. You may see him if you'd like, though."

She leads them down a short hall to a small and dimly lit room. It's obvious that the focus is meant to be on the two coffins whose glass sides glimmer even in the dim light. The first holds a man who wears old fashioned clothes that would be more fitting as a costume for a Shakespeare play than as actual garments. Blue doesn't want to look in the other coffin, but she makes herself do it anyway.

Gansey is pale and still in the glass coffin.

It isn't just that he looks dead, it's that he looks as though he’d never been alive in the first place. Ronan sucks in a breath beside her. Blue can feel her hands wanting to shake, so she clenches them into fists at her side.

"What did you do to him?" Adam's voice slices cold and sharp in the echoing room like the edge of a knife.

"Nothing he didn't let happen. That's the thing about kings," she says. "They're always wanting to die nobly to save someone else. Bit of a waste if you ask me."

Ronan is shaking, and Blue can practically sense the anger leaking out of him. She grabs hold of his arm as they follow the queen back into the main throne room, making sure he doesn't lose control and lash out. As they walk the queen starts talking, and Blue holds more tightly to Ronan's arm, both for his benefit and for her own.

“I'm amassing quite a collection of kings. I'm quite partial to the idea of keeping them in glass coffins, these days.” The queen raises an eyebrow, and looks at Blue. “Maybe you can try waking him up using true love's kiss.”

The queen laughed low and throaty at the joke, and Blue has never wanted to throttle anyone as much as she does in this moment.

The crowd of creatures are still silently watching them as they walk behind the queen back towards her throne. She settles lazily upon on it, in a motion that's halfway between slouching and perching.

"Now that you're here and you've looked upon my face, I'm afraid I can't allow you to leave."

Blue's heart drops to her stomach. They'd never considered something like this happening, and she doesn't know what to do.

Adam steps forward, looking like something ancient and powerful with the light from his staff casting shadows on his hollowed cheeks. "How about we make an arrangement of sorts? We prove that we are capable of besting you, and you allow us to leave with Gansey."

"Leave  _ without harm _ ," Ronan adds. Adam nods appreciatively at him.

"Well, that makes things more interesting." The queen laughs. "You're welcome to try if you think you can manage it."

Adam smiles thinly. "I'd like your word, actually."

The queen still looks vaguely amused. "Very well. I give my word that if you can best me, you may leave unharmed and you may take your king with you."

Adam nods, and then in a swift motion, draws a line through the air with his staff. Sparks of light crackle from the end of it, the edge markers of a larger body of magic. An invisible something drifts towards the queen, the only sign of it a subtle warping of the air.

Just before it reaches her, the queen flicks her hand in a dismissive gesture and it vanishes. Adam goes pale as the queen stands and pins up her long, trailing sleeves.

As she pins them, she says, "Silly boy. Did you really think you could do anything with your borrowed magic? I've known the forest since before your father's father was born. I have bent it to my will, and I'll do the same to you as well."

She holds a hand out, and for a beat nothing happens. And then Adam's eyes roll back in his head as he collapses to the ground.

On the floor, Adam strains against nothing, the tendons in his neck sticking out painfully. Ronan makes a strangled sound and takes an involuntary step closer to Adam. Blue grabs his arm to try and stop him, but it's too late. The queen whips around to stand in front of Ronan.

"And  _ you _ ." Her grin is made of pointed teeth. "Greywaren."

Ronan flinches, pale and startled like he'd just been slapped. His jaw is clenched shut, and he looks like he trying really hard not to react.

"That is your Name, after all. Not that silly little thing the humans have been calling you. Honestly, calling a thing like you a little seal is like calling a panther a cat. You could do better, you know." She trails the point of one blackened fingertip against Ronan's jaw. Ronan looks like he wants to throw up.

He says through gritted teeth, "That's my decision to make."

The queen hums, softly, and says in a sickeningly saccharine voice, "I have your Name. I think you'll find nothing belongs to you any more."

She tilts her head as she looks at him, a blandly pleasant smile on her face. "I was honestly expecting more of a fight. This is just sad."

His eyes squeeze shut and his fists are clenching tighter at his sides.

Stop.

Stop.

"Stop," Blue says, surprising herself and the queen. "That's enough. If it's a fight you want, it's a fight you'll get."

The queen turns to Blue with a dangerously intense look. Blue stares back. The air is tense, with unfocused magic buzzing in the space between them. But nothing happens. The queen's eyebrows furrow and the air around hums even more, and still nothing happens.

The magic in the air disappears as the queen bursts into bitter sounding laughter. "Well. It looks as though there's actually to be a fight, then."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I mentioned how much I am ready for Blue to be the HBIC?


	26. Blue is a BAMF

The queen sweeps off her flowing veils in a motion that somehow manages to look like birds taking flight. One of the creatures in the throne room gathers the bundle of fabric in their arms and carries it out of Blue's sight. The rest of the creatures sweep back, leaving a wide circle with only her and the queen standing in the center.

Blue starts rotating her shoulders, loosening her muscles so that she doesn't give the queen any more advantages or weak spots to exploit. She turns the blades in her hands, letting the familiar feel of the pommel give her comfort. She takes a deep breath to calm herself down. It would do no good to go into a fight unsettled and scattered. Emotions can't cloud her judgement here; there's too much at stake.

They stand facing one another. There's a pause, and then Blue takes the offense. Being on the defense is always so much harder because you have to be perfect every time.

The queen is being sloppy. Blue may not have the height advantage that the queen does, but Rioghnach keeps leaving her openings that Blue ruthlessly exploits. It's a bit unnerving for a few moments, but then Blue realizes that the queen isn't playing at a larger strategy. Rioghnach's just so used to using her magic as a crutch for her fighting that she's floundering without it.

Blue sails along on the clarity of her adrenaline high, every action pulled seamlessly from the one before it. She fights with a fluidity that comes of actions drilled into her muscles until they become automatic, and it's thrilling that her body knows what to do. She redoubles her focus and watches for the next opening.

There's a beat in the fight, a slight pause that changes the rhythm like a stretched muscle suddenly loosening, or the change in air pressure right before it rains. It's subtle, but Blue feels the shift, and she knows the queen feels it too.

Blue's not just holding her own. She's winning.

Careful not to get too cocky, Blue watches for her opportunity to end this fight. She can feel her energy flagging, and wants this over with as soon as possible.

And there!

Blue hooks her leg around the queen's, and pulls, leaving the queen sprawled across the stone floor. Before Rioghnach can move, Blue pins her to the ground with a knife at her throat. Blue tenses her muscles and prepares to slide the knife across her skin.

"If you kill me, your precious little kingling will die too."

Blue stops, the knife poised against Rioghnach's throat. "What are you talking about?"

"The magic on the glass coffin will fade within hours, and your little king will die." The Queen's throat bobs under the blade, and Blue presses down a little harder. "You wouldn't let your true love die, would you?"

Here is her choice.

She pulls the knife away from the Queen's throat. A thin line of red marks where the blade had rested on her fair skin. Rioghnach is smiling smugly at her. A victory of the mind is still a victory. Time feels slow and heavy, like molasses.

She knows what she needs to do.

"I'm sorry, Gansey," she whispers, then drives the dagger into Rioghnach's chest.

The faerie queen dies, choking on her own blood with surprise still written on her face.

Everything is quiet. Blue feels her eyes get hot, vision blurring with unshed tears. She manages to keep it together until she walks over and presses a hand to the top of Gansey's glass coffin. He's so still and quiet that Blue's chest aches at the sight. Before she knows it, she's sobbing with big ugly tears. Ronan wraps his arms around her at some point in a sort of aggressive hug.

Adam is on the other side of the coffin, silent tears sliding down his cheeks. He swipes at them angrily with the heels of his palms and says, "No.  _ No _ . This is not the end."

"What are we going to do then? Magically bring him back to life?" The words feel ripped from her throat.

Adam's eyes glint fiercely, and he says, "I have an idea."


	27. An Ending and a Beginning

Once upon a time, there was a king.

_ (No, that's not quite right. _

_ Let's start again.) _

Once upon a time, there was a boy who wanted to be a king.

_ (That's better.) _

The boy who wanted to be a king grew up a modern prince. From his mother, he learned diplomacy and the art of doing unto others. From his father, he learned a kind of logic that could be trotted out on a leash and a tone of voice that was unshakable. From the spaces between their lessons, he learned how to keep his problems to himself and smile through them.

He wanted to be a king.

And kings take on the burdens of others; they don't give their own burdens away.

In all the stories this little prince had ever read, the king was the unquestionable foundation that others built on. The king would lead his people through a time of trouble, being strong when others needed him to be. Unyielding in the face of adversity, they took a stand when others would not.

They were always needed to pull their kingdom from darkness and into prosperity.

 

When the little prince's kingdom came under fire by the forces of evil, he knew what he needed to do. A king is never afraid to do the difficult thing for his people, and the little prince wanted to be a king more than anything.

So he met his enemy in the field, hoping for the best and expecting the worst.

When his enemy held out a dark fruit, he ate it and knew he would die. The moment the fruit passed his lips, he collapsed instantly and lived no more.

 

When his body was taken to the evil queen,  _ (because what is a fairy tale without an evil queen?) _ she placed him in a glass coffin to display her victory over the little prince.

"What a fine collection of kings I have," she would croon to herself in her palace.

But the little prince was not yet a king. He was an almost-king, a nearly-king, but he was still just a boy.

The prince laid in his glass coffin, pale and still. His true love  _ (because these stories always have true love in them) _ came to rescue him, but nearly wept at the sight of the dead prince. His true love was a leader in her own right, bringing her knight and magician with her on her impossible task of searching for him. She was strong and brave, and faced the evil queen.

"I have come to take my true love home," she told the wicked queen. But the queen would not give up the little prince without a fight, and so his true love battled the queen.

The fight was long, but his true love bested the queen, stabbing her in her dark and cruel heart.

 

But the prince remained cold and still in his glass coffin. His court finally wept at the sight of him laid low. They tried to wake him, but found that he remained dead despite their best efforts. Hope drained from them with each passing moment the prince remained dead.

"I have an idea," said her magician. "We must take him to the forest. The magic in the forest is the place for miracles."

And so they gathered his coffin upon their shoulders and carried him away from the palace of the evil queen.

They walked for many miles, the glass coffin pressing hard lines into their shoulders, their thighs straining from the weight. His court carried him all the way to the ancient forest, and laid his coffin next to its heart-tree.

"Please help us wake him," they asked the forest. "He is our king and we love him."

The forest looked into their hearts and saw their love for the little prince was true, and so the forest wrapped the prince into its leafy arms and breathed life back into his body. Once upon a time, a boy died in the forest, and the forest never wastes magic, especially not the magic of a human life. The cursed fruit dropped from his mouth, and he opened his eyes once again.

 

_ Now at this point, most stories would end with happily ever after, but this is real life we're talking about here. Happiness isn't a guarantee for anyone, not even the princes from fairy tales. _

_ So no, they didn't live happily ever after. _

_ But they lived. _

_ And sometimes, that's enough. _

  
THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest thing I've ever written, and I really liked writing it. While the apathy caused by acute engineering coursework made this not as good as I would have personally liked it to be, I'm still very proud of myself and my work on this project.


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